


Constant State of War

by GryffindorNight



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Bad Puns, Everyone is Badass, Multi, a lot of clichés watch me go, i wrote my own SPECTRE with lots of gambling and married women, the great adventures of Felix and Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:08:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23463718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GryffindorNight/pseuds/GryffindorNight
Summary: Bond sleeps with seven married women, has a middle age crisis, gets drunk and breaks into Q's flat.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 16
Kudos: 116





	1. The Heat

**Author's Note:**

> The summary is not in order.  
> [UP2L8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UP2L8/pseuds/UP2L8) best beta.   
> Cheers.

Bond has been in Liberia for seven hours. When M had called him at midnight to order him to get out of the casino before Sophia could deal with him first hand, it’s night again. Sweat sticks his shirt to his back. When he looks up, and sees the gun, thinks: _I know you._

For fithteen minutes he’s been following six men across balconies, stairs and narrow alleys. The shotgun he saw under the pale light of the moon seems out of a collectionist’s catalogue. Bond is interested.

 _Beretta Imperiale Montecarlo_ , he thinks while advancing in the darkness of the street, the tail splintered in two places.

“Q,” he says turning on the earpiece he has in his pocket, “one of them is an Olympic champion.” And an assassin; without hearing the answer he takes the earpiece off and crushes it in the mud.

Bond recalls seeing that shotgun a year and a half ago in Bulgaria, behind a theater. His mission didn’t fail back then, exactly, but it’s always problematic when Ministers die and the secret service has to secure the location. Two months ago he wasn’t convinced that it was the same gun that had caught his eye while watching the Olympics.

He wonders if he can get to kill this man soon, or if he has to wait.

Bond cleans his forehead with his forearm, moves forward through the serpent-like streets. He feels like having a drink, long and cold and tasting good; leans on one of the walls for a moment, moves on, then stops to avoid crashing into someone taking a corner, listens from afar to a conversation in Portuguese, answers in English with a Middle Eastern accent.

There have been four accidents in political events in the last year and a half, some disconcerting deaths. The first one happened before he’d had to go back to Skyfall, but it was after the second that Bond began to work here and there between Africa and Asia. Until two months ago no evidence connected the deaths, but Bond had always had candidates in mind, and he wasn’t the only one. After years in the business one comes to know who the best killers are, whatever side they happen to be on.

It seems that his target is not well known inside his world, anyway.

Standing in the gloom, Liberia extends dark to the horizon and Bond feels sweat between the Walther and his ribs. It’s hot and humid, the air smells of the sea. The group he is following stop; they walk into a candle lit house. Bond breaths deep, sticks to the shadow, the black silhouettes of people in the street are more sounds than images.

A robust woman hands beers over to them, Bond hears them speak, in one English touched by several languages, about the weather, and the drinks, and the job.

After two hours of listening to their small talk and to the sea birds (probably Fea’s Petrels, Bond guesses), one of them finally says that it’s time.

The man with the shotgun rubs the broken tail of his gun. “Make it fast. I have work tomorrow in Paris.” 

Bond exhales with relief for not having to wait any longer to act. Trusting mostly on his ears, he shoots the shotgun man between the eyebrows without coming out of the shadows.

When he’s unloaded the entire magazine except for one bullet, he’s sure he’s killed all five of them. He knows he’ll surely be chased by the neighborhood gang, and Bond runs.

The sea level air feels like a crushing weight on his shoulders as Bond sprints. After many detours he reaches the airport, a safe place to pull out his phone. Q is the one who answers.

“Silver in two consecutive games. Was it the gun? Nice weapon, good modification, would explain the ballistics,” Q says without letting Bond speak. 

Bond makes an affirmative sound. The kid’s smart and there’s no need to explain anything to him most of the time.

“Yes, it was a shame to leave it behind,” he says honestly, because it was a beautiful weapon, and because Bond understands developing a taste for one in particular.

“Down?” Q asks like he’s filling out a form. Maybe he is.

“Confirmed.”

A pause. “Extraction?” and the sound of a plane.

“Required.”

-

Sophia deals him eleven hands and Bond makes blackjack in six.

Bond likes Sophia; she’s got quick light hands, her nails always match the color of her eye shadow, and while her hair is arranged like all the girls in the casino, the style looks better on her. She throws the cards with precision. When she passes him his hand, Andrew serves him a martini. Bond gives it a long drink for the seventh blackjack of the night.

“I can’t believe your luck, sir” says a woman with white hair, seated on the other side of the table.

Sophia smiles and the lipstick looks just the right color. “The house pays blackjack, Mr. Bond”.

-

“It’s four and fifteen in the morning, OO7. Have you ever considered sleeping?” asks M, circles under his eyes. 

Bond saw him hang up the red phone when he came into the office, and he wonders if another ambassador has died in a house with all the doors securely locked, if there’s another assassination to connect.

“Never during working hours, M”.

M rolls his eyes. Bond sits down thinking that with time he might get used to this new kind of exasperation.

“Do we know anything else?” Bond asks, his chest warm because of the martini and his pockets thrilled thanks to a good night at the casino. M is wearing a perfectly pressed suit and Bond is sure he has a meeting in a moment.

“Joseph Coleman, Olympian,” says M, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “Langley believes he confirmed at least a dozen assassinations.” 

Bond guesses they have no proof, but an analized pattern, and thinks: _you were good_.

“Then our analysis is the same,” he says, and M makes a vague gesture that says nothing at all.

Bond gets the impression that this is more serious than he knows.

“He was going to meet in Paris with Muhammad,” M says, and slides over a blurry picture in black and white of a man with dark glasses.

M doesn’t elaborate for a moment and Bond examines the photo. He’s sure that the man is carrying a weapon, that he drinks with regularity, and that his hand doesn’t shake before killing. Bond knows his colleagues rather well, even if he hasn’t seen them before.

“Mossad” says M, the word heavy in his mouth, and Bond frowns at once.

“His superiors have denied any relationship. There’s order for search and capture.” 

Bond stands up.

M continues. “The CIA knows about Paris. The man they have inside has assured them that Muhammad will be in Paris three days more, until the end of the International Environment Summit. They’ll send someone.”

Felix, Bond thinks. Who else would they send?

And then, International Summit, and murder.

“There’s suspicion about Muhammad’s superios in Mossad,” M iforms him. “They refused to lift confidentiality on his file.” M stands up as well. “You have license to kill, OO7.”

Bond thinks of a Israeli spy and autumn in Paris, and knows this is bad news, a time to flirt with death.

-

Moneypenny is sitting at her desk when Bond comes out, her hair dry but freshly washed, dark red dress, her curves long. Bond wouldn’t know how to not want her.

“You never wear that dress when we go out for dinner, Moneypenny”.

She looks at him with a dangerous smile in her eyes. “We never go out for dinner, James”.

They talk about the small rain on the window and about drinking champagne when snow falls. Moneypenny laughs and Bond longs for her, mostly because she knows what to say not to reject him, but never to accept him either.

Bond is sure that he was also trained for that. Moneypenny tells him Q is down stairs waiting for him and they say goodbye.

“Don’t forget to live life, James” she says when he is halfway through the door, and Bond turns to look over his shoulder.

“When snow falls, Moneypenny,” and he winks.

She smiles, Bond is almost sure she likes him for real.

-

Q has a winter jacket on, a cup of tea beside him, and four screens alight; his silhouette stands up inside the lonely laboratory. Bond believes Q is yawning, but he can’t see enough of him to confirm it.

“OO7,” he says turning around, “it’s always a good day to go to Paris”.

Bond says “Q” and nods. Once closer he notices Q’s aftershave and smiles at the fragrance of Calvin Klein.

Q looks at him like he’s a code to be broken, quick and easy, and says, “Good blackjack night, then,” and turns around. “I have got another gun I want back”.

He hands him a rectangular briefcase. Bond opens it on top of a desk nearby and counts fithteen magazines and his standard weapon, a watch, earpieces, and a multiple-use jack knife.

Q doesn’t stutter, drinks his tea. “I thought it’d be useful; it’s a prototype,” he breaths and then, “it has a corkscrew and another twenty useful attachments.”

He must have slept a couple hours, Bond thinks, because he looks less caffeine charged than usual. His hair hasn’t been cut in half a year. There is a half-assembled gun on a table behind him. Q isn’t bothered by working at all hours, and Bond sympathizes, so he smiles a good smile. Q narrows his eyes.

“Safe trip, Bond,” he says, turning around and smiling with half his face.

Q is smart. Bond has learned to respect that on merit. He smiles again because Q saw through his intentions even before he, himself realized what he was doing. Bond doesn’t defend it; it’s hard to unlearn the habit of charming his way through people, so Bond doesn’t try.

“We’ll speak soon, Q”.

-

Muhammad is only the most common name in the world. 

Bond lands in Paris and casually navigates the airport to a taxi. There’s a freckled woman in the reception area that stares at him and Bond smiles thinking: _in two hours the first conference starts._

Outside the hotel he sees a common kestrel flying among the buildings near the location.

Then Bond sees him, standing on the roof, a short man with brown curly hair carrying a VSSK rifle on his shoulder. It’s the third roof he’s checked. The local authorities precariously protect most of the influential politicians attending the Summit, and rooftop surveillance is nothing out of the ordinary for an event of this magnitude. 

But that’s not the worrisome part.

What worries Bond is that the VSSK Vykholp is a Russian firearm. What is a Russian doing where an Australian was meant to be? Why were they hired by an Israeli? How is it that they’ve created such chaos and nobody knew about them?

It’s a fantastic gun for a sniper who isn’t an expert, and this one likely isn’t given that he wasn’t aware that his choice of weapon might give him away. He was probably hired on short notice. As far as M knows neither Muhammad nor his men had any way of knowing that Coleman died in Liberia two days ago. Then again, M doesn’t know everything about Muhammad. Bond sees the Russian scan the surrounding rooftops and hesitate over the roofs; he’s selected the highest spot. Bond knows he can make it there faster.

“To the right, OO7,” Q instructs while Bond runs south. He turns and sees an alleyway without exit, but doesn’t doubt and goes all the way in. “Left,” and Bond notices a fake wall.

When the short assassin gets to the high tower of the church, Bond is waiting for him, gun out.

“Where’s Muhammad?” he asks in Russian, and the man looks at him with such undisguised terror that it’s just exasperating.

But then he says, “That suit it’s a Tom Ford,” and that’s odd but true. ”You’re MI6.” The truth as well.

Bond knows this man expected him, knows that whoever sent him expected him too.

The man curses in Russian once, throws the rifle down, and before Bond reaches him, jumps into the void behind him.

Who is Muhammad? How does he know Bond if Bond doesn’t know him.

-

In the clothes of the little man were two cigarettes, eighty euros, two fake IDs, and the corner of a business card that Bond’s seen somewhere. He’s sure that if he thinks about it for a while, he will remember where.

Q asks him if there’s anything to follow, and in the background Bond hears the keyboard and his breathing. Walking away from the corpse he describes the card to Q in three words, Q makes a short sound.

“Le Petit Casino,” says Q without doubt, and Bond remembers how eight months ago he won enough to pay for all the martinis that night, but almost lost his life afterwards.

-

It was to be expected.

Felix is sitting at the poker table nursing a whisky and cautiously looking at the first roulette table. Bond steps out from behind the column that kept him hidden and Felix sees him from the corner of his eye, smiles to the cards, bets.

They share a couple words, a toast, Bond sits down and they both know they are both making the same observations, and that at the roulette wheel there’s a woman with a semiautomatic on her thigh, caressing a margarita, winning without celebrating.

“Ah,” says Felix, and with an easy gesture covers his mouth, says that Panama’s Minister of Environment killed herself in the shower. 

They share a tense smile. Felix withdraws from the game.

Bond wins a hand and has a drink. “Where does all this heat come from?” he asks, and Felix tips his glass to him with sympathy.

They decide over blackjack who will talk to the woman. They tie two hands. The woman comes to the table herself and, without looking at either, places a bet.

“They were waiting for you,” she gestures in sign language, so subtle that it could be but a nervous tick while waiting for a good hand. Bond looks at her very closely and wonders where all these well trained people were coming from.

Of course they are attacked two hands later. Bond kills the dealer with a cocktail glass, and he sees the woman get into a car outside the north exit.

The heat’s on his tail. When he comes outside himself, someone shoots him from a roof.

-

He’s out of magazines. He loads the last one, and Felix shouts from two floors above that their targets just got into a car. Bond asks if they were heading north, already running, and Felix says yes the moment he jumps out of a window.

Bond feels it in his gut when he lands on the roof of the truck, hears Felix fire inside the building again, and fires between his feet. He kills them all but one, three dead. The lone survivor looks at him, impassive.

“They weren’t my friends,” he says, and Bond recognizes a Boston accent.

“Then you won’t mind getting them out of the car,” says Bond aiming at him, and the man, with no revulsion, pushes the bodies out into the street.

“You’re English,” the man says when he’s done. “MI6. Have to be, ‘cause of that PPK.” And he smiles. 

Bond feels bothered, but the man stretches with ease in front of the gun and says, “Inside the river house we’re all fish.”

Bond puts the gun down, gets into the driver’s seat, answers, “In sweet Virginia we’re all brothers.”

“Leiter came?” the man asks.

Bond registers him in the back seat, thirty four years old, black hair, green eyes, four weeks growth of beard. Surely ex marine, in field work for at least a year, unarmed but alert, thinks: _you’re good_. Nods.

“You can call me Les.”

“Bond.”

Les is a good spy, as relaxed in front of the cannon as he would be in front of a friend. Les also knows where and how far north the woman with the semiautomatic is.

Her name is Anna Vukovic, Les tells him. “You have to shot me, here in the arm, here, here, listen, she used to work with Israel’s Secret Service until she married Muhammad.” Les didn’t even complain about being shot at. Instead he got out of the car and gave Bond the name of a hotel.

-

She’s alone, because Bond killed the guard in the hallway and the one at the door. Inside he’s sure he doesn’t have long, but she’s drinking a cocktail with brandy and Bond remembers the one he wasted in the casino.

“Just in time…” and she points at him with a finger like she wants to locate him.

“Bond,” he says, “James Bond.”

“Mister Bond,” she says, and hands him a Horse’s Neck.

Half a measure of brandy and three of ginger ale, a lot of ice. Cheers, thinks Bond while sniffing the drink.

“Anna,” says Bond after drinking, and she looks at him like someone who expects something. “I’m here to kill your husband.”

“Good,” says she, and comes closer to pull at his tie. “I’ve been trying to do that as well.”

They make love with trained diligence and precision. Bond undresses her and she bounces on him and it lasts long enough to see her come as angry as she seems to be.

“Why are you going to kill him?” asks Bond, while zipping his pants.

“He’s a traitor. All of them are traitors.” 

There are footsteps in the hallway.

Q’s voice is in his ear. “The north window, and then the third window past the balcony,” and Bond doesn’t stop to think that he hadn’t turned off the earpiece.

He finishes the drink in one gulp and they both climb out the window.

-

It’s Felix who kills Muhammad.

In a safe house that Les arranged for them and that Anna suspiciously knows, they gather, the three of them. Felix has blood on his tie but steady hands while confirming that he took Muhammad down ten minutes ago.

“Who’s Habusmel?” Felix asks, pointing a Colt M1911 45 calibre at her. Bond has never seen him use it before; he must’ve taken it from someone he just killed.

Bond takes a step to the right, and answers, “Mossad,” because it’s the name of Muhammad’s boss, or so he read in the file M gave him.

Anna has tears in the eyes and says, “Bergen”.

Bond recognizes in the line of her shoulders the desolation of someone who wants to go home, but she sighs and comes apart by herself, calm, says to Felix, “Easy Langley, I’m not your enemy.” 

Felix snarls that he had five men on his ass under her command, besides her husband.

“I know, it was my duty, I surrender, I’ll collaborate,” says she. Her cleavage doesn’t hide her; Bond thinks she’s the most relieved widow he’s ever seen. “He’s dead now,” she continues. “I was also undercover”.

-

Waiting for the flight to Oslo a brunet man with a gray suit delivers him a phone with an active call. M talks to him hurriedly the moment he puts the phone to his ear.

“Muhammad’s name was Abel Sephardi. It’s possible he never committed treason with intention. He delivered reports for all of his missions as if they were official. Mossad shared the files after sending a team after Habusmel.” M breaths in. Bond knows Q is watching him through the cameras in the terminal. He and Felix sat in this particular place for that purpose.

“We assume Habusmel is on the move.”

Bond watches Felix sleep in the chair across from him, shoulders relaxed and even breathing. Felix sleeps with the half sleep of someone who will always be alert.

“Shabak followed Muhammad for years,” Bond says quietly. “It seems his entire department was suspicious for quite some time, but had no definitive proof. Their agent got us on the trail. Habusmel will be in Bergen by Tuesday.”

“Israel’s Intelligence?” says M out loud, and Bond hears Tanner whisper ‘the other one too, then’ mortified. “Who was the agent?” asks M.

“Anna Vukovic, Muhammad’s wife, confirmed GSS in mission starting three years ago”.

-

In Bergen, Habusmel shoots Felix in the arm and Bond takes a long knife in the back that could’ve killed him.

Bond runs out of bullets near the dock and Felix passes out in the street in front of all those triangular houses, the colors warm in the cold afternoon, and the boat they meant to follow sails on leaving a trace of foam.

Bond arrives with Felix at the safe house two hours later. The phone rings as soon as they get inside.

“OO7,” says Q on speaker, “What you need to stitch that wound is behind the bathroom mirror.”

Bond doesn’t ask whose wound. He decides both, hears the keyboard, the breathing, maybe Moneypenny’s high heels.

“In five hours you’ve got to be at the airport. Tickets for Kiev are reserved. Habusmel will be in Odessa the day after tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Q.”

“Your car is in Odessa already.”

Bond gives him another good smile. Q doesn’t see it.

“Sew up that wound Bond, before you die of old age”.

Felix laughs, proving what Bond knew: that he was only sleeping the half sleep of those who are always alert.

-

Over ice in a wide glass, Bond is served a measure and a half of aged rum with coke and lime; the cuba libre tastes good on the beach. Felix is wearing sunglasses and is staring at the horizon with apparent drowsiness..

“I still don’t understand how the deaths are connected,” says Felix. 

Bond takes a long drink. “Maybe they were killed by the same team, but on different jobs,” he suggests. 

Felix makes a gesture that implies he also considered this. Both know they have no proof that any kind of team exists.

“If that’s the case they’re good,” says Felix. Bond agrees, and Q makes a dry sound that might have been his finger, tapping a screen.

This time Bond isn’t an image on CCTV; at best he’s a dot on a monitor when Q says, “Company arriving from the north.”

Bond draws his gun in a fluid movement that’s more than enough warning for Felix.

“Habusmel was with a dead man yesterday,” says Q in his ear.

“At my five o’clock,” says Bond to Felix, who finishes his drink with elegance before standing up.

“Relevance?” asks Bond, Q says that it’s not everyday you see one of Mossad’s finest come back from the afterlife. Bond’s sure that’s not good news.

“I thought you hated earpieces,” Felix comments, his gun safety off. Bond makes a generally annoyed sound.

A dark skinned woman gets out of a car and Bond knows by the cut of her dress that the only place to hide a weapon would be her inner thigh, and that woman is a knife wielder. This time Bond remembers to avoid being heard while having sex.

“Oh, I’ve always hated them,”he says, considering, and then throws the earpiece he’s wearing to the sea in a short movement.

-

Bond drives the BMW that Q sent him on a wide road that takes turn after turn all the way up the mountain. Felix is shouting dirt on the safe line so Bond listens to him while doing the math; the pain medication must have lost it affect some forty minutes ago and a gunshot wound to the arm is a painful problem, so he understands Felix’ frustration. Personally, Bond doesn’t usually take analgesics for a simple flesh wound.

Felix is fine, so Bond hits the road. The woman is beside him unconscious. The fight inside the bar at the beach was an apotheosis. Bond’s arm is numb; one of his opponents blocked his punches and managed to a hit to a pressure point.

-

When the woman wakes Bond asks her straight up if she prefers to die quickly or if she’s willing to talk. It’s been twenty minutes since he lost their tail and Bond believes his distraction won’t last longer than half an hour.

She smiles, but her hands are shaking.

“My husband died three days ago, I think I am the one who deserves answers.”

She speaks a French , learned in college and practiced in Paris often. Without dilly-dallying she says her husband was an assassin. but laughs when Bond asks if he worked for some government.

“My husband was a criminal, or he was when I met him. Now everyone has become criminals, even the good guys.”

Bond counts the pulse on her neck and observes the dilatation of her pupils, listens to the rhythm of her voice and pays attention to the direction of her eyes. Amber has gradually become more at ease. Her defensive posture is now open. She’s telling half truths.

“You’re like them, like us, you’re an assassin as well,” and Bond says, “Yes.”

She smiles again and under the moon she is beautiful. “Two men from Israel and one Hispanic man made business deals with my husband.” The line of her body is white because of her dress.

Amber is looking for vengeance, because criminals know honor. Those she looks for are traitors, and Bond is sure they’re following the same lead.

“Why did you try to kill us?” asks Bond. 

She pulls the knife from between her legs and throws it in the backseat as surrender.

“Men like you have come before, but this is Amber’s land,” she says, and Bond realizes Amber is not her first name, but her last name, or her husband’s.

“Are you sure they were like me?” asks Bond with all the innuendo he can project into the sentence.

She looks at him sharply, like a woman who knows exactly what’s been offered to her.

Bond guesses they’ll be found in fourteen minutes, so he makes her come in ten without undressing her, touching her close to where she sheathed her knife, and kissing her slowly.

“I’m glad you decided to talk,” says Bond starting the car with the taste of her in his mouth.

Amber sighs deep, looking at the road ahead. “After the way I’ve lived, I won’t have a quick death,” she says, convinced, and Bond wishes for her, in silence, not to agonize over any wound.

-

Felix points at the woman walking with Bond. He’s got blood on his face Bond registers briefly that it’s not his own.

“I had the heat up my ass, I swear Bond you bastard.”

“Me too,” says Bond with sympathy.

Felix snarls angrily. “You’ve been warm in other places”.

-

Up in the mountain there’s a huge house and Amber walks in with the familiarity of years. Bond watches her decant the champagne and Felix is still tense, sitting straight and looking out the window.

“Habusmel,” says Felix, like an order, taking a glass.

Amber nods, tells them about her husband selling a couple of shotguns and three rifles a week ago, that Habusmel came with Pérez, they agreed to pay her husband for putting down a Defense Minister. “Or so they said, but they killed my husband in the middle of the job and the Minister died by another’s bullet”.

The phone rings, Amber answers and without saying anything extends the phone to Bond.

“Nancy and George Amber, trafficers of guns and arrangers of payed assassination. They’ve made contracts with two Italian mobs but facilitated the capture of the leaders.” Q takes a sip of something hot. Bond hears him blow softly. “Kohan is alive.”

Bond laughs, disturbed. Five years ago Bond shot Kohan in the stomach in Siberia He was confirmed dead. Bond saw him packed into a forensic bag.

“Pérez is Colombian. Habusmel bought guns from Amber a week ago to assassinate India’s Minister of Defense,” Q says again and makes a sound of surprise; when Bond is about to ask if there’s any more information to follow Q speaks before him. “Airport, Moscow,” and hangs up.

Bond must do something unusual that gives away his surprise because Felix pulls out the gun and asks very casually if he has to kill Amber, Bond asks, “Vodka in Moscow?” and Felix says “what” half interested, half anguished.

Amber gets on a helicopter in the backyard and wishes them a good hunt. Bond watches her take off, wondering how far she’ll go with her vendetta. Then the BMW makes an odd sound, the key vibrates, and Bond puts the car in gear for the drive to the airport, but also to see what’s happening.

“Target file,” says Felix when he sees the half page being printedout above the glove box.

Bond knew Q would have something more to say.

-

George Amber was an undercover agent for the Ukrainian Secret Service, active until assassinated. Pérez used to work for the Colombian DAS, which was shut down. They are all linked to Kohan, the previous rockstar spy from Mossad, like Muhammad and Habusmel.

Also, Habusmel and Kohan were both in Odessa two hours before, but left on a private flight, a private jet registered under the name Vólkov, a Russian magnate, fake animal fur business.

Bond re reads the file thrice and knows Felix has read it once without having it in his hands, says, “They discovered Amber because all of them have been in this business for a long time,” and Felix whispers that he’s never heard of such consistent international cooperation.

-

In Russia it’s evident that they’re playing big time, too many eyes, rumors that finish with dead people.

There’s a sniper in that abandoned building up front. Bond knows even though he hasn’t taken a single shot. Felix gestures with his hand and they split.

Q tells him “There’s two gas tanks behind that container,” so Bond lets himself be followed before shooting a calculated hit. Q tells him, “three out of four down,” and Bond answers, “Those deaths weren’t mine,” teasingly.

Q asks him, rolling his eyes –Bond knows without seeing him, “Who makes all the guns?”

Bond wasn’t sure Q was comfortable with death until now.

The next, Bond kills without intention, because there’s a long rope and a cliff and Bond needs answers. He pushes and presses but the man with sickly white skin says nothing in the middle of his anxiety, only sweats cold in Bond’s hands and stutters that he has children.

“Habusmel” Bond barks, and the arsehole doesn’t even breath differently nor move his eyes like he remembers, only insists he knows nothing.

“Pérez” Bond insists and the man cries in fear in the pinkish morning outside Moscow.

“Muhammad,” Bond demands, not wanting to give up too soon, and the man opens his eyes a fraction wider and Bond knows he’s got him.

“I can’t,” he says at first, trembling. “I’m dead if I talk,” he swears. 

Bond tells him Muhammad is already dead, and with his brown eyes filled with tears the man tells him he was hired to wait on some assassins, but he was a distraction. The meeting with Muhammad was supposedly in-

Part of roof of the house where Felix is falls with a roar, the cables whip lose and one lamppost falls heavy and fast over the cables of the next, and then the rope Bond holds burns his hands with a pull and the man with white skin, brown eyes and black hair falls into the void behind him with the rope at his neck.

“That’s a cliffhanger,” says Bond.

Q grunts immediately. “That’s not funny, OO7.”

Bond then understands that Q doesn’t dwell on the deaths in the field, but has never caused one by his own hand, has never smelt the blood nor the gunpower up close.

-

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, all good children go to heaven._

Outside the airport Bond smokes a cigarette. There’s some boys arriving from America, with their bright tourist bags, listening to You Never Give Me Your Money by The Beatles on a small stereo speaker. The wound on his back could use a scratch and he got jet lag two countries ago. M was in a meeting the last time he knew something.

Felix approaches with an espresso and a smile, asks if he’s in the mood to go to Argentina. The CIA sent him a picture of Kohan outside a casino in Mar de Plata. He’s accompanied by a well known beauty queen trainer.

-

In the safe house is M and also Q, and Felix superior, who introduces himself as Trower, but they all know his real name is Jones. Personally, Bond knows because he couldn’t follow orders from anyone. Jones has a deeper hairline than a few months ago and the change in the color of skin on a finger says he stopped wearing a wedding ring some eight weeks ago.

“Trower,” says M anyway, and Bond thinks how everyone present knows his name is Mallory, not like his M. As for Bond and Felix, their names are no secret.

The only one Bond has no name for is Q, that cannot remain.

“After the analysis on all casualties it was determined they all match with specialties of agents from nine agencies all over the world,” Trower has the voice of someone used to be heard with attention, Felix is lighting up a cigarette in the corner, “some have been declared dead and others are under investigation or prosecution as of now”.

M makes a resume of the profiles known so far, the ones confirmed dead and the ones alive, the ones suspected to be alive, the ones chased for years.

Then Q says: “Carolina Andaur used to be part of the National School of Intelligence of Argentina, her speciality matches the death of the Austrian Ambassador seven months ago” and he places on the table a light equipment to maneuver urban areas.

-

Felix, Trower and M leave, the bosses to their bases and Felix to get more painkillers.

Q is wearing a jumper that surely tints the water each time it’s washed and his hair hasn’t seen shampoo in a day and a half. He has mild eye circles. Bond pictures him in the plane.

“OO7,” he says, like scolding him, but they weren’t talking, he was writing something rhythmically on his computer and Bond was cleaning his semi automatic.

“Q,” Bond is almost sure Q is twenty five, but he could be wrong, it’s not easy to read him like he’s regular people.

“Andaur will spend the weekend with her lover Rodolfo, the beauty queen trainer. He has a house by the beach. Kohan should be there.”

Bond loads the clean Walther and Q watches like he’s looking for injuries on the gun.

Q tells him that if he could see the actual perimeter of the house he would be sure how to install some of his remote microphones, and then starts to describe the kind of data he needs about the house. Bond empties the magazine and loads it again.

“And if we go to the beach, Q?”

Q looks at him with reproach.


	2. The Shot

Bond is having a good time, in a crystalline beach with lots of women in bikinis and a nice target to analyze in the distance.

The house is a modern palace; it looks like a full size doll mansion. 

Bond smiles. He’s surrounded by tourists and Q is very still in the water, watching his own feet. He’s doing well.

“This is the best kind of field work,” Bond says to him, and Q looks at him weird. With the sun in his eyes, Q looks like a boy halfway through college. Bond pulls him into the circle of German girls playing with a ball.

Bond spends forty minutes flirting with the tallest girl from Berlin, talking in fluent German. She ends up telling him how the queen trainer has had the doors closed for four days, but a few days back he invited her over for a couple cocktails with her friends. Bond makes a joke and they laugh. She has dimples and is honestly gracious, so Bond laughs for real, charmed, and on the beach right there in that moment all things are good.

Q looks at him interested, like he never saw him laugh, Bond thinks that surely no, and throws the ball at his face. To his credit, Q easily dodges. 

After two hours on the beach and Bond knows which window in that house makes less noise when opened.

Q is sitting on the sand and asks him, face a little pink, “Who’s got a palm tree inside their house?”

Leaving the beach Bond shoots a microphone through a little opening in one window, and Q confirms that they have a successfully bugged palm tree.

-

Q takes a long shower when they get home, and when he comes out he puts on the same clothes from the day, tells Bond he didn’t book a room because he has to get back. 

Bond watches him organize all he brought, and assumes Q had to come because few had the clearance to know about this matter since it involves so many agencies. Q still has his hair untidy because of the sea, Bond’s face feels warm from the sun. 

Q gives him a brief look, but a determined one. Bond feels evaluated, so he looks back with intention as well, and Q smiles like Bond is stealing the gesture from him. 

“Stop, OO7,” he says, calm.

Maybe his posture was a bit of an invitation? Bond is sure that among all those trained to seduce he’s the best, inevitable. Bond almost never turns that off, he’s learned to make it comfortable. So he laughs again because Q seemed to enjoy it, but he stops because Q looks somewhere else. 

Q is a good boy. His reserve is calculated, Bond lets him go.

-

After three days of Kohan talking tirelessly in Venezuelan Spanish about how to get rid of ten paid shooters in a comuna - while Bond and Felix take turns stalking the house like bugs on the walls, replacing the microphones Andaur has found twice - they finally confirm that she and Kohan will go to Medellin to kill Pérez. 

Felix can move with fluity now but from the settee, holding a mojito with double white rum, ice, peppermint and lemon, he says, “I take the owner of the house, good trip to Colombia.” 

Bond would lie if he said he dislikes Colombia, so he downs his own mojito in one shot and before Moneypenny calls to confirm tickets he stands up to get the tie and jacket.

-

“James,” says she. “The flight is at fourteen o’clock, be on time.” 

“I’d never keep you waiting, Moneypenny,” he says. 

“Bold of you to believe I have a reason to wait, James.” 

“I’m bold in many ways.” 

She laughs.

-

Bogota isn’t a bad city. It looks a little like the Liverpool of twenty years ago and there’s a gourmet coffee shop on every corner. Bond walks the seventh avenue with a lit cigarette. Nearby the safe house, Q speaks in his ear. 

“Mossad shared interesting data. It seems Pérez decided to work with them five months ago in the operation that investigated Muhammad.”

“They have somebody else in?” asks Bond. 

“Jazmín,” says Q, “I couldn’t find any more information on her since they sent the report. I only have info about her from Mossad”. 

Bond buys another cigarette on the corner, a coffee on the next, and wonders what are the odds that he could leave Colombia without getting shot.

-

A month later he is able to rest for the first time since Vesper died. On a mission in Paraguay, surrounded by machine and cigarette smoke, in a bar; Bond sits to listen to The Spy by The Doors, and to drink a shot of clean tequila to make the night lighter. 

He remembers saying out loud, “What a good song,” because the bartender had done it before, to play the right music for the moment, but it was a woman on his left who spoke to him. 

“Good for a lover?” she asked with reserve. 

And Bond answered with no filter. “For an enemy.”

That night Bond swore to know her deepest secrets, when he made love to her unhurriedly. But in the house of love, that night Jazmín was an incredible spy. 

For two hours she succeeded in taking intelligence from him that almost cost him his sanity. 

Shooting her wasn’t a personal matter, it was about coming home with the mission accomplished. She threw a knife at him and Bond jumped to the side. 

The knife took a curve in the air. 

Bond thought: _I do love a woman who can hurt me_.

-

The DAS where Pérez worked was an Intelligence Agency the Colombian government had to close after many dark accusations. Bond has met a few Colombians agents, good ones. That currently work in the diversity of the business, that were left alone, some persecuted, some not. Bond wonders what would have made Pérez associate with Kohan to then betray him, even if the betrayal is easy to understand. Kohan is an arse Bond enjoyed shooting at. 

Felix calls him on a secured line and tells him that Rodolfo, the queen man, was the nicest guy he’s ever had to interrogate in his life. He assures Bond that there was no need to hurt him to get him to talk, and even flirted with the intention to save himself. 

Nonetheless, Rodolfo doesn’t know Pérez. Rodolfo was Carolina’s sugar daddy for years without knowing her job. She had come to his place a week ago, in a gorgeous dress and with an AK-47, to tell him that if he opened his mouth to reveal her location the government would have them both killed. 

Bond always knew retired, fired or rebel agents did not necessarily get out of the business, but rather tended to die in it at some point. Truth is, he has no knowledge of alliances coming from such different backgrounds, because even though Bond’s best friend is American, Bond has killed Americans. Felix has also killed Bond’s own, and each one has their boss, and their sources, and if they weren’t the brothers they are, they could have been enemies. 

When morning comes in Bogotá, Bond drinks an Irish Coffee, one measure of the best scotch he found in the shop on the avenue, and a cup of the best coffee he’s had in years. 

It is M who contacts him at nine thirty, to say that he won’t have to go to Medellín since Pérez confirmed to assist at a party in thirty six hours, twenty blocks away from Bond’s safe house.

-

When Bond comes back from surveying the bar where the party will go down, he finds the door to the safe house has been recently opened. One, because of the evident size 42 shoe print in the hallway, and second because Bond left a toothpick near the hinge of the door and now it’s broken. 

Adrenaline gets his head on in a second, chest warm. With steady hands Bond takes the gun he has by his ribs, opens the door with a thud. 

Inside he finds Q, who’s pressed into the corner, a PPK in his hands, eyes focused.

“OO7.” 

“Q.” says Bond, putting the gun down. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

Q looks at him disbelieving, lowers the weapon and puts his hair away from his face. 

“There’s suspicion of the MI5. Tanner’s been in a meeting for nine hours. Nobody is cleared to be here except me.” 

Bond accepts this begrudgingly. Moneypenny surely has more experience, and possibly has more clearance than both of them put together. Bond has had to learn to put aside his pride and give up working alone. It’s cooperation that makes for good espionage, whether he likes it or not.

-

Theatron is a bar filled with bars, including a rooftop bar, a pub, an antro, and a vintage wine bar. Incidentally, it’s also a gay bar, usually packed, full with buzzing logistic staff and drunk people. 

Bond sits at the main bar and has a Heineken, looking without attention at the strip show. 

“I count three,” says Q softly and Bond knows without looking that he’s twelve meters away at his seven o’clock. 

“I count four,” says Bond. Q makes a vague sound that could be frustration.

Bond doesn’t have time to tease him over his inexperience, because Q says, “Pérez at four o’clock,” and the party begins.

-

They surround Pérez like a clan of smiling hyenas, but they don’t close on him. Q is having a vodka with orange juice sitting between two lesbian girls, looking at his phone. Twenty minutes pass in tense calm, the music playing loud, the crowd dancing, the environment is humid but it doesn’t smell, there’s too many people but there’s attractive women, men that aren’t bad. 

Pérez leaves the bar, moving towards the rooftop or perhaps the disco bar, and Bond tracks him like an antelope in the plain, going for an escape, the four hyenas follow at once. 

Q stands up with the drunk movement of the crowd and follows, Bond sees him from behind, looking the least suspicious; the six of them leave the main bar. 

Bond meets with Q in the hallway, just outside the sex shop. The other four men are standing beside the stairs. Pérez cannot be seen nearby. 

“Where?” asks Bond between his teeth, but guesses the lower rooftop.

Q is about to speak when two of the men come back toward them while the other two take the stairs down. Both men sport military haircuts, stares too cold for a party, tense hands. Bond guesses two automatics on the first, between his thighs from the way he walks, the second carries more than two knives on him. 

Q is against the wall, cocktail in his hand. Nobody else is in the hallway and it’s dark. The men stop very close without looking at them. Bond hears them talk, missing words due to the noise, but then one of them aims out of the window, says “traitor” and “finally”. Bond distinguishes a Walther P99 when the light washes them momentarily. 

Mechanically, Bond grabs for Q’s glass and throws it at one of them. 

Q looks at him wide eyed when Bond leans close, enough to smell the vodka on him; and then reaches with his hand and covers Bond’s earpiece with it, like giving him a pet, afraid and yet, clever.

The glass broke on the floor, Bond turned his back on them, and Q makes a little sound when they kiss. It’s chaste, soft.

Bond is reaching for his gun when a hand grabs his shoulder.

“Hey faggot” says a voice, angrily.

Bond turns around fast and shoots him right below the jaw before he says anything else.

Q shakes a little, though the shot doesn’t make much of a noise with the silencer on, and breathes out looking somewhere else.

Bond steps aside from him and over the body before the other one turns around, then Bond shoots him, so calmly that the group of people coming his way don’t notice until they walk under the halo of light of the windows.

Q speaks behind him and in his ear at the same time. “Pérez is on the roof,” and through the window Bond sees him just when the screams over the dead bodies start.

Bond is thinking about Q’s closed lips while jumping from the window, feels excited but probably it’s just the job. 

Bond rolls over Pérez after falling, people shouting, shots roaring and Bond shooting with a consciousness that feels like something outside his body. Pérez doesn’t let himself die easily and fires another Walther P99 he pulls out of a boot. 

Q is also shooting from the broken window, taking cover behind a column, the shots eating the dancehall beat, the people storming to the exits.

Jazmin is the only person standing still in the midst of the terrified crowd, looking through another window at the rooftop. Bond sees her with the eyes he learned to open on his back.

Bond is sure his bullets kill most of Pérez's backup, but not Kohan, who never shows up, or Carolina.

Bond isn’t sure if Q killed anybody.

-

Moneypenny is smoking a cigarette in the entrance of the United Kingdom Embassy in Bogotá. Her hair looks black in the gloom of the night. Bond knows she’s got her own PPK against her leg and that she’s the closest she’s been to active duty in many months. Still, she looks calm. Moneypenny is good, _very good_. Her legs don’t give any tell of the gun, the taxi driver stares at her without refrain. 

“Too much traffic?” she asks when the three of them get out of the car and Pérez laughs insanely like a man who almost died several times and it’s finally safe. 

M is inside with a thick folder in his hands. Pérez sees him and recognizes him at once.

“Kohan told me about you because he wants to kill you,” he says in an accentless English, and finally they start getting solid data about what’s going on.

-

Moneypenny is outside the interrogation room with Q when Bond comes out. Q is sleeping and she’s petting his hair. They’re sitting in a pretty leather settee, beside two big pots of maidenhair. 

“You’re never that gentle with me, Moneypenny,” says Bond, and she turns to see him.

“The only time I’ve ever seen you unconscious, I had shot you and thought I’d killed you.” Moneypenny smiles like she’s glad she didn’t, Bond smiles as well. 

“You haven’t been that tough, it’s alright”.

“Q needs to go back to his equipment, we’ve got leads to follow.” 

And then Q wakes up like his start button was pressed, says, “I have a vodka craving.” 

Bond on reflex says he does as well. 

“When do you not, James?” says Moneypenny, but it’s Q who’s looking at him, like he’s not sure if Bond is flirting.

And maybe Bond is. He generally is. 

-

Everything is quiet and yet Bond feels exposed.

A blackbird flies by the window, orange legs, Bond looks at it, anxious. 

“Hm,” whispers Q from the king size in the bedroom, with three computers on and interconnected, typing nonstop. “Pérez is an interesting man.” He stops doing everything at once to turn around and take a drink of the vodka Bond had the decency of getting for both of them. 

“Why?” asks Bond, thinking: _could it be the identical gun to the others? Was he attractive?_

Q makes a face after the drink and shudders under the covers a little, but types again. “He sought to make a copy of everything that went through him there’s so many files I won’t be able to read it all tonight.” 

“That’s a fact,” says Bond, because they have the dawn on them. 

Q nods but doesn’t raise his eyes, keeps reading tirelessly. 

Bond has guarded post until half drunk, he takes another sip of Smirnoff looking sideways to one of the screens. It’s an encrypted email, written like a telegram. For some reason Bond thinks of the war. He supposes his sentence will always be to recognize an order to kill. There’s one for an American Minister. 

Stretches briefly, decides to sleep for an hour before going back to watch and wait for orders, he rounds the bed and when he gets rid of his shirt, Bond notices Q gives him a stealthy look. 

Q, with such circles under his eyes that he can’t stop drinking vodka or starts falling asleep every fifthteen minutes. 

“I have cameras on the perimeter” says Q halfway to a yawn, and when Bond asks him if he’s slept lately the brat laughs at him.

“Never on the job, OO7.” 

Bond finishes taking off his clothes until he’s in his pants and a tank shirt, gets under the covers and it’s so warm he notices the sun coming out and getting to them through the cracks of the doors and windows. Q looks yellow in the daylight. 

“I can keep on reading,” Bond offers. 

Q doesn’t stop typing. “You don’t have to”. 

Perhaps not, but the ones with clearance are few. Surely Felix is on a plane to Colombia right now. Bond would fear for him, but Felix is unkillable. 

Bond doesn’t insist and Q doesn’t stop, but his nervous system betrays him twelve minutes in. Bond unplugs one screen and places it on the floor beside the bed. Q awakes flustered, looks at him with open reproach, seems surprised to see him on the bed. 

Bond manages to separate him from the screens. Q sinks into the bed and doesn’t try to have another drink. Bond stretches to the other side to take the mouse away from Q’s hand, the smell of vodka still on him, and can’t help but remember how easy it was to kiss Q nicely. 

Q exhales while Bond is over him and deliberately looks to the side. Bond is sure to be offering something again. He’s being soft, and it’s a little confusing. Bond doesn’t know what his motive is. Q is very still and Bond is very aware of him. 

“You don’t have to,” says Q again, but he doesn’t mean the same. 

Bond puts the mouse down on the floor, finally. 

“I’d like to make you feel good,” he says, and the words are heavy in his mouth, strange. 

Q turns to look at him. Bond isn’t on top anymore, but beside him. 

Q almost smiles. “I don’t know what you’re playing, Bond.” 

_Me neither_ , Bond thinks. 

“You can say no anytime,” Bond says, and moves one hand before they stop looking at each other, touches him on the inside of one leg, high up until he feels vertigo, and then stops. Q closes his eyes, opens his legs a little. 

When Bond slides his hand into his pants Q trembles, and it’s a surrender, his gesture, because on the second stroke he gets hard fast, so much Bond wonders if he’s sensitive because of the hit of his own blood. 

“Q,” says Bond, affected. 

Q has his eyes closed and his face upwards, he tenses all over and then stretches, long and thin under the covers. Bond touches him with practice, like reading, where does Q want it more, where does he like it better. 

Bond’s hair stands on end on his neck, Q relaxes against his body for a moment, trusts up, and then grabs his arms, sinks his fingers in Bond’s skin. 

“Ah, Bond.” he says, tensing all over again, air leaving his mouth. 

Bond has a wet hand.

When Bond pulls his hand out of his pants, Q’s is sleeping like a log.

-

It’s not until Bond decides to get out of the bed and go to the bathroom that he realizes he’s hard. In front of the mirror he thinks about the weirdness of this affair, like it’s most unexpected, _but_ _the joke is on you, James_ , he thinks, aware he caused this. 

Bond, who can feel the heat a gun pointed at him from blocks away, finds it surprising somehow that he wants to come as well. He won’t explain it aloud. That would imply saying he’s not attracted to men, which isn’t false but also isn’t true. 

He couldn’t say how many men he’s slept with. He could estimate it. It must be written in an archive with all his encounters in the sheets, on the job or during it. In the moment when it was required Bond didn’t hesitate, nor was he disgusted, no fear, no shame. 

Bond chases skirts for pleasure and on the job he chases anything, doesn’t he?

Bond jerks off and comes in the bathroom, with his eyes shut.

-

At eleven o’clock someone knocks on the door. Bond lifts his head from the screen. He already saw their visitor on the surveillance cameras. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Q sit up like a spring and pull the PPK from under the bed with the semi alert expression of the recently awakened. 

Bond gets out of the covers at the same time Felix walks in with a cigarette and a black coffee.

“Hey my brother. I told you all these spies were associated.”

-

Before leaving, Q takes a shower and packs three bags full of computers, informs them that Moneypenny is about to arrive. and standing in front of the door with the gun in the small of his back, takes a deep breath.

“Field work isn’t my strong suit.” he says.

Felix smiles at him in sympathy. Bond tells him, “You weren’t bad at all,” and Q looks at him indecipherably while opening the door. 

“I think I’d rather not kill anyone again,” says Q very lightly, but Bond notices the night did break him, and even wonders how it’s going to weigh on him. 

Moneypenny is outside, she’s wearing a coat that makes her look superb. 

“James,” she says without raising her voice, “I recommend Jazmín, she almost caused me to lose a kidney.” 

The moment they leave Felix asks him without shyness why his side of the bed smells like sex.

-

That afternoon they try to change safe houses because Felix is more than sure that in a couple of hours they’ll be surrounded, and as it turns out, in the middle of a joke of a highway north of the city, they do indeed get very much surrounded. 

Bond changes car twice, his PPK runs out of bullets with three cars and a motorbike on his tail. Felix jumps a barrier driving a Ducati Multistrada, firing a Smith and Wesson 29. It's quite a poetic image. Bond makes sure to slow down the right moment to let him get in the car. 

Once in the car Felix throws a Remington XP-100 over his legs and Bond admires almost with pleasure the colour of the wooden stock, then takes it in hand, charges it happily and asks Felix if the Ducati was the 1260 or the S Air. Felix got blood on his suit but it’s not his, also he’s sitting in a way that implies his bullet wound is no worrying matter anymore. 

“1260 S Air, we have ‘em on our asses, Bond.” 

“I’m working on it,” Bond says, and while driving aims the Remington out of the window, taking the corners to shoot the driver of the car behind them. The car crashes and misses the corner, takes half a turn back and then Felix shoots at the gas tank with a beastly grin on his face. 

The car explodes sonorously and Bond steps on the throttle, this whole thing with Felix is always interesting. 

“Four down, two to go.” 

-

It’s ten at night when they make it into the new safe house. Felix has a mantle of blood crusted on his clothes. Bond smells like sweat and lotion, so he steps into the bath before Felix has time to claim it first. 

When he gets out Felix is slouched over the dining table, reading page after page of whatever Q is printing them on the house’s computer. Felix looks up and starts to undo the buttons of his reddened shirt. 

“There’s three here I was sure to have killed three years ago,” he says. 

Bond reads a big part of it before Felix steps out of the shower. It’s a lot of information, so he feels like having a cigarette. 

He’s thinking about the business, about what it would take for a good agent to betray and abandon his superiors and colleagues, when Felix puts on James Brown inside the house. 

Bond exhales listening to Sex Machine. Felix comes out to the balcony with a cup of coffee in his hands, and they both watch the city for a moment. They’re almost positive that nobody followed them. They have even put on different clothes to confuse the CCTV on the way in, but it’s impossible to not be alert. 

Felix sighs and Bond turns to look at him. 

He’s got his hair wet, used shampoo, his clothes are clean and Bond can smell his aftershave, the warm trace of the ironed fabric even though it is cold. Felix looks back at him. 

Bond winks at him, the gesture spontaneous. Felix smiles, and leans subtly against the rail, but the warm aura of his body is more evident, his posture is open and inviting. They smile at each other. 

There’s many things Bond can be certain about Felix. They’ve both had clear moments of trust, and in this life they both carry that as a connection that can define everything, particularly to whom you’re able to turn your back. Bond doesn’t know Felix as well as he’d like, but it’s not because they aren’t best friends, but because in this business it is hard to know everything about someone. It’s hard to know one self. 

Bond is sure Felix is straight anyway, even when he’s seen him unrecognizable wearing a crop top and lipstick in a bar in the Philippines with men sliding their hands up his legs. Even when he and Bond flirt almost routinely, Bond has seen honest love in Felix's eyes only directed to women. Felix wouldn’t fall in love with a man. 

And yet they both remain there on the balcony, weighing the other, because after training it for years and performing even asleep, flirting with a potential enemy is just as vital as having good aim.

And they’re best friends, Bond thinks. 

It’s clear they both would sleep with Kohan (and they’d do it right, at the same time if it was needed) to solve this, which has them waiting for the sound of a shot and might not let them sleep. It’s also clear that unless something extraordinary happens, unless the trust was no longer there, neither of them would want to sleep with the other for simple attraction. 

If Bond fell in love with a man, it would have to be a strong one, he guesses, because strength attracts him. Felix is as strong as a rock, but Bond couldn’t fall in love with him. 

“There’s twenty pages more on the table. That Q kid is better than I expected,” says Felix, because they’d both shared the initial disbelief. 

Bond thinks about the way Q said his name and how it felt in his hand and doesn’t know what he feels. Want, maybe. 

“He is”.

-

Bond meets Beatriz following one of the leads from the pile. He’d played something like poker with Felix to decide who goes where. Today Bond is on a restaurant in a nice neighborhood, observing Flavia Dos Santos from afar, an agent presumed killed on duty for ABIN, Brasil’s Intelligence. 

Beatriz asks him in English, “Do you have problems reading the menu?”

Bond deduces she took an online course, and that she practices watching Friends or some American comedy by the style of her accent. She’s surely from the center of the country. She’s a black haired woman, brown eyes, with a kind smile and a dress that suits her. Bond isn’t sure if she learned English before or after she lost her husband. 

“A little,” Bond lies, partly, “could you recommend something to me?” 

Flavia, his target, worked for Brasilian service for twelve years, but something about her posture tells of her lack of recent training. Bond keeps up an entertaining chat with Beatriz for two hours and a half, until one of the men at the Brazilian's table alerts her of a weird foreigner a couple tables over. 

Bond leaves the restaurant with Beatriz, and they talk about sushi and traveling and Colombia’s good coffee. She’s tender and charming and Bond could look at her the whole night if he didn’t have work to do, places to be. 

Beatriz gives him her number. Bond will call her.

-

That night they have a sort of conference between MI6 and Langley. Q has dark circles and while speaking seems to shudder a bit, talks very clearly anyway. 

They’ve discovered an association of exiled, presumed dead, agents who went black, who betrayed their agencies. Most of them were well trained, most of them with contacts, with current affiliations. 

“The war won’t stop,” says Q, quoting them. “It is not like they have an organization’s mission, or a purpose further than a high priced illegal contract, but in several conversations, the ones we presume to be the leaders discuss their pessimism about peace in general. They seem convinced that serving one or another country is identical, that we’re all immersed in a constant state of war, and that eventually we’re all going to kill one another, always.” 

“Terrorists” says Trower. 

“Perhaps they were discussing Hobbes,” says M, frowning. Bond has to hold back a laugh but his face doesn’t change. 

“We still have bodies to confirm, actually,” M goes on. “It seems we only have them on our radar because they are not friends, exactly, so they’ve betrayed each other.” 

Trower nods, “We have twelve more names, confirmed.” 

It’s a long list. M outlines which countries they frequent, where the leaders are presumed to be, and it turns out Andaur, Jazmin, and Kohan should be in Colombia by next weekend. 

They speak for three hours. It seems Jazmín let Mossad know she was working with Kohan after the assignment to kill him was given to her. Q also has reasons to believe they are married. 

They are almost done planning when in the CIA and London the red phone rings at the same time, and the conversation ends. 

In the safe house, Bond fills out paperwork until he’s disgusted. Occasionally he glances at Felix who types drearily on his computer, filing the reports of the last few days. 

“Q,” says Bond an hour later, because communication with MI6 didn’t hang up, just went silent. Bond can hear the far sound of typing, once in a while, and the sound of arming and disarming something metallic. 

“OO7,” says Q on the other side, far away from the microphone, a little surprised. 

“Get some sleep.” 

Q falls silent for a moment, and then says, “You can’t give me orders, really,” and then there’s the sound of a chair and he says, “Good night,” through a yawn.

Bond laughs enough for Q to notice, says, “Good night, Q,” and Q hangs up the call. 

Felix is staring at him over the screen of his laptop with the devil in his eyes. Bond dignifies himself by saying nothing, and Felix proclaims while still writing (surely something very poorly redacted), “I had no idea you might find me attractive for real.” 

That makes him laugh. Bond must have done something to give away his dilemma, maybe a small gesture of his hand, or the direction of his stare, because Felix laughs as well, and asks him for how long, and why, and if Rafael in Polony two years ago had been an act. 

Bond says, “Rafael is one of the stories of my life,” and Felix stands up laughing. 

“So much of a good ass he was?” he asks handing him a drink. 

Bond answers in all honesty he hadn’t even fucked Rafael, hadn’t even killed Rafael. Still, his death is one of the most bizarre things he’s ever seen. It had rained too hard that night, and when they came out of the cabin in the woods, the trees were aflame. 

“It’s the only time I’ve seen someone struck by lighting,” and then Bond raises his glass in toast. “To Rafael, who had an electric personality.” 

Felix chokes with the drink, mid laugh, “What a bad joke.” 

They drink a bottle of whisky, filing the rest of the reports and toasting. At the end of the night Bond says, “I don’t know what his name is,” and Felix sees through him immediately. It’s one of those moments of strange trust they always end up having, because Bond has not said anything without making puns and drinking, but he’s sure Felix just got it, maybe even better than he’s got it himself. 

“There’s no name that cannot be found, brother, sure thing,” and Felix smiles sharply sideways. 

Felix, epic Felix. Bond would probably rise hell if he were hurt.


	3. The Defeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The great [UP2L8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UP2L8/pseuds/UP2L8) did the beta, I can't be more thankful.

Bond has a free week, in theory. There’s a couple more reports to fill, a couple to read.

Knowing about the two infinite scales of flight from Bogota to London, Bond decides to stay, to call Beatriz, and to drink rum with Felix until it’s time to fly to Cali, where the meeting will be. 

Beatriz wears her hair tied this time, the lines of her face are soft and her smile is open. She’s one of those people who’s never fired a gun or chased a lead on someone for months to kill them; someone out of the business, fresh and gorgeous and with an accent that gets nicer as time goes by. 

Bond invites her for a drink and they go to the casino. She laughs, placing bets, and makes a cute little pout when she loses. Bond’s enthralled, the curve of her hips is tempting and she’s closer each time. 

They see each other three days in a row and wake up together the third, have made love all week. Bond recognizes her scent in the flowered sheets of her bed, the put together kitchen, the living room of her apartment, between her books and her table with melons. Beatriz makes the best breakfast he’s had in life, surely, mostly because of the coffee. 

“Gringo guapo,” she calls him, petting his hair while Bond eats, with her nails painted dark red and wearing thin black pajamas. Bond can tell her body underneath the cloth. 

Beatriz is one of those entirely beautiful creatures, that laugh pretty and cry pretty and even sing well, who have long legs and are proportional everywhere, a woman out of a dream, who serves the best coffee in the world. 

Beatriz speaks Spanish when she says she’s leaving on the weekend for Cali to visit her family, it’s a simple fact shared in bed after fucking because it’s already Thursday and truth is, Bond also leaves tomorrow. He’d honestly like to stay in bed with her, not leave her, her innocence, and her green painted house. 

“We might see each other in Cali if everything goes right,” says he, hoping to not have to kill her, for her to not be involved. 

Bond usually reads people well, usually reads women very well. Beatriz is transparent, a widow, probably an orphan, no children and alone but without solitude. Beatriz has never killed, one can tell by her eyes. 

Bond doubts her, clearly, because it’s his job to do so.

-

Bond takes the fifth in Cali, the taxi driver ignoring his argument with Felix over the right time to get to the Grupo Niche bar. 

The whole file for today seems written by someone good with words, even though the text is as arid as a dictionary. Bond remembers the reports she and Tanner used to write, and feels a measure of nostalgia, to remember how the new M isn’t as bitter. He’ll have to get used to him, to Moneypenny incisives. 

“We have a lot of info,” says Felix with an air of uncertainty, like it’s bad news. Bond isn’t sure what to believe, because Kohan and Jazmin are involved, so for starters he’s got a grim feeling. 

The bar isn’t bad, at least.

-

It’s Flavia they find first, because nobody else shows up, and they wait for hours, stalking through the hallways, trying to look the least suspicious as possible between the latino crowd. But the party is over, the bartenders aren't serving anymore drinks, and Flavia leaves with two white foreigners. Felix says they might be Danish; Bond has thought them Swedish. 

To follow Flavia is easy in this neighborhood. The streets allow them to advance without being obvious. 

Felix crosses on a red light with the blessing too-early hours. The road is empty and he says, “All seems so easy. We’re supposed to know everything, but nothing happens; it doesn’t feel right”. 

Bond is hot.

-

Flavia arrives at a block of apartments. He and Felix are cautiously rounding the residential complex, finding a spot where the cameras won’t see them climb the fence, when Beatriz walks by behind the car wearing a purple dress and Bond steps on the brake at once. 

One way or the other, Bond has work to do, so he steps out of the car and says hello. Beatriz seems honestly surprised to see him.

“How did you know my sister lives here?” she asks, a little intimidated even.

Bond says sincerely: “I didn’t know,” and then lying, “I came looking for some friends, but I don’t know their apartment number, it’s a Brazilian woman and two European guys”. 

“Oh” says Beatriz with something dark in her eyes. “The foreigners, yes, they moved in twenty days ago, they’re close to my sister’s, let me show you,” says she.

Felix comes out of the car and greets her, and Bond knows there’s something not right with her, that she suspects something, or knows something, because she’s tense, in that way people who've never trained to hide it can be evident with their emotions. 

Beatriz is innocent, must be. She points at the window where “those people” are and tells Bond in his ear that his friends aren’t nice. She suggests that he stay with her, or go to a hotel, all the better to leave those kinds of friends behind. 

She says so with a motherly tone only used by women who don't know what kind of person he is. She says it like she’s thinking his ‘friends’ smoke pot or drink too much, says it so precious, Bond steals a little kiss and tells her he’ll call her later. She makes the same face she made when losing at the casino. 

Felix says, while they climb the stairs and load the guns, “What a perfect woman,” and Bond nods.

-

It gets a little ugly. Flavia's two men turn out to be Norwegian. Bond fights with one of them until his knuckles are scrapped, his gun laying close to the front door. Flavia tried to shoot him with it but couldn’t, thanks to Q. The fight goes on for a while and, oddly enough, it seems like they are fighting away from the walls and furniture to keep the noise down for the neighbors. 

Bond manages to stab one of the Norwegians with a knife, and barely had time to feel relieved, when Flavia jumps out of the second floor window, into the pool in the center of the complex. 

Bond watches her, almost taken back for a second, and then searches through his pockets for the utility jackknife Q gave him. Activating the electric taser by pulling out the cork opener all the way, he throws it at the pool when it’s charged instead of firing it. 

“Flavia!” Bond shouts, and she turns around just in time to see a bolt of electricity touch the surface of the pool. Her expression makes Bond think of Rafael again. 

There’s screams from the neighbour’s windows. Bond goes to the kitchen to see Felix tying the Norwegians with their belts. They’re unconscious on the floor. 

“What happened to Flavia?” asks Felix. 

“She was shocked to see me,” says Bond, and winks at him.

Felix rolls both eyes kind of smiling. 

“What did you just say?!” asks Beatriz scandalized, and Bond turns around so fast his neck almost hurts. The gun is between them but Beatriz shows no sign of wanting to get near it, or near Bond in general. 

“Assassins,” she calls them both, in Spanish, crying. 

Behind Bond, Felix lets one unconscious body drop to the floor, with a thud. 

“When they killed my family in front of me, years ago, I decided to forgive so as not to go crazy. For you, I forgive nothing,” says Beatriz. 

Bond finds her so beautiful, Beatriz with her hair loose and heeless sandals. How terrible it is when Bond scares them, when he makes them cry. 

“Don’t make me witness your war, I beg you,” she says, shaking a little, having a panic attack. Did Beatriz see Flavia die? Did she come because she was worried about him?

“I would never harm you Beatriz.” 

She breathes deep and comes near. Bond tenses but is sure Felix’s got his back, so he stays very still and very ready for anything. All Beatriz does is pick up the gun and place it in his hand.

“I would’ve loved you the way you need it, gringo, but your love would kill me, so please never see me again.”

-

The police arrive twenty seconds after Beatriz walks out the door. A Norwegian wakes up just in time to hear the sirens get closer. Bond feels calm with his gun in his hand. Felix has his CIA badge and a fierce look of a predator ready to kill and eat from the dead. 

The Norwegian laughs, says in English, “Time to pay.” 

The first official to cross the door is, not strangely, Jazmin. 

It all happens too fast, Bond thinks, because clearly when something is planned coldly that’s the idea, because professionals know what they’re doing, because there are forty against Felix and him. 

Bond unloads his weapon, breaks two necks, shouts at Jazmin that he never expected her to marry a son of a bitch like Kohan, but “Now you’re more of my type, anyway.” 

It’s pure nihilism, to insult her, because Bond knows he’s lost this hand. 

When his neck is hit he tries to fall in the most dignifying way possible, and that’s it.

-

Bond wakes up in a room with red walls, that smells vaguely of cigarette smoke and cheap vodka. He’s wearing a white shirt and grey trousers he’s never seen before. 

He doesn’t need to get close to the door because it is most probably locked. There’s conditioned air, so he’s not sure about the actual weather of the place; the ceiling is two meters above the floor and there’s one bed where he’s lying, a wood table, one chair, a camera in one corner, and a door that must open to a bathroom. 

It’s not his first time, but each time defeat happens, Bond feels older, less the owner of the world as he thought he was. Defeat makes him, inevitably, think of Vesper again.

-

He spends three days absorbing information. 

The smell and colour of the food they give him, for example: it’s the kind of Chinese take out bought in Bolivia. The tell is mostly the state of the shrimp. Bond has had nine meals of terror because of the smell; and it must come from two different shops, because the chicken changes consistency, the chips their shape, and the rice is seasoned with a different brand of sauce. 

It’s not at all like it’s toxic food, and he’s analyzed very consciously the taste and texture, as well as his vitals after ingesting. He’s just offended, mostly with himself, for not being able to eat the expensive seafood that he likes, and for getting captured like an idiot. 

Bond has had much worse conditions while kidnapped. Much better too. 

They’ve also brought him half a bottle of vodka a day, with a package of cigarettes - no filter, local brand, decent tobacco. These items are in a plastic red tray, slipped in over a crack in the door that can only be opened from outside. 

The hands have been of two different men. One knows martial arts judging from the aligned knuckles; and the other is a smoker judging from the fingernails, also a good shot judging from the way he pushes the tray. 

Bond drinks a sip of the vodka, ready to spit it out if he tastes anything, or if he doesn’t and his instincts warn him. He’s in the bathroom; but in reality he’s examining in great detail the electric shower. He has used it twice already; the pressure is a shame, but the temperature is nice. He’ll be cold after, he guesses. 

On the fourth day, the soda they bring him has a softer texture than usual. Bond spits it out but loses consciousness forty two seconds after.

-

Bond wakes up tied to a chair, gagged. 

Jazmin looks severe under the artificial light of the room, the lines of expression on her face are evident. If Bond wasn’t as focused on trying to read her, he’d think she’s even more beautiful now than when they had their knife fight. Maybe he does think about it. 

Jazmin sees him awake, seems to count on her mind to ten -maybe fifthteen, and then says, “Nobody is coming for you, that’s a fact.” She is very serene, “OO7.” 

It’s true, one is always alone when defeated, Bond knows. When Bond wins and while he’s winning, he’ll have guns and cars and good hotels, champagne, M’s voice with orders and an office with the picture of the Queen. And Q, as well, hopefully. 

He craves a well shaken martini. 

“James Bond and Felix Leiter, fallen,” Jazmin smiles a little. “I confess that for me it was personal, but it brought a rejuvenating effect on the whole team. There’s a queue, because it’s payment due, so we'll see how long it takes you to die, James.” 

Bond imagines who they might be, since he read Q’s file he knew he’d had things to settle. Bond is thinking about names when Jazmin kicks him on the ribs so he loses his breath, and is left drooling on the gag. Bond registers she’s improved her fighting skills in all these years. 

“We give you back your war, James.”

-

After the first week they’ve used him as a punching bag four times. Silvio, a Brazilian he almost forgot about because they met before he was OO7, was the better puncher.

Bond left this whole situation from the first moment to his muscle memory, the one the army and the training division of the old M forged into him, because there’s no other way to get out alive and sane from a fuss like this one. So he follows the whole protocole his memory and instinct remembers. 

A hundred times each for squats, push ups, abdominals, and some high knees for half an hour. And the day begins, because even though Bond can’t see the sun he’s gotten used to the food schedule and is almost sure it’s dawn outside. 

It will take him nine hours to assemble a functional radio with the pieces he’s got on hand, but then he can’t spend more time in the bathroom than necessary, because he’s in a spies’ prison, and because if he’s not the first to think about it, he has to be best to execute it. Besides he needs to steal an auxiliary cable and a microphone. 

How to get out of this room, away from the four red walls.

-

A week and a half later of eating the same thing three times a day, the food makes him vomit, but his reason knows the food is identical to everyday’s, it’s just his disgust, the beginning of desperation, and the beatings. 

Carolina Andaur visits him that night and when Bond sees her up close realises he already knows her, that she went by other name in Casablanca when they made love once. Her nose was different and her hair had another texture, she had more hips, her eyes different. And Bond guesses her husband’s death must have hurt her deeply, and the surgery must have been expensive. 

Bond has no gag, but doesn’t say he killed her man in two strikes without making him suffer, because it’s not worth it anyway. In the middle of several close punches he manages to pull with his mouth a pair of android headphones she had hanging on her neck, he keeps them very well under his tongue but believes himself discovered. 

“We’re not few, Mr. Bond, and we all want to hurt you, so we’ve decided to not use knives or guns until the first round is done,” she says at the end. 

Carolina focuses so much on hurting him that she ignores the piece of broken cable that Bond spits between his teeth for her to believe she ripped the headphones apart in her frenezi. 

When she leaves and they untie him he has to massage his hands to try to hold them steady, has to make himself vomit in the bathroom to get back the whole cable. 

His fingers burn while unscrewing, and he’s thinking he might electrocute himself, cursing when he feels another sudden electric shock, trying to cut the cable with the plastic cutlery from the food, and wonders if Q believes in karma, but then if it was about karma Bond would not be alive. 

And Bond refuses to die in such an inelegant circumstance.

-

By the third week Bond has the radio almost ready, but he’s got one sprained hand, two light burns for electricity shocks and bruises everywhere. He realises while assembling the emptied shower, in the thirteen seconds he’s got, that he hasn’t thought what to transmit, and where. And also that he’s having a breakdown. 

There’s no mirror in the room. Bond has had a beard for a few days, it’s almost all white from what he can tell, more or less blond under the light bulb. 

He gets out of the bathroom, opens the bottle of vodka of the day and smokes a cigarette, it’s the worst vodka he’s ever had, let it be said.

Bond curses to himself, and does it again while finishing the push ups and stretching his left arm. But besides that he stays quiet while panicked.

He smokes two cigarettes more and feels overwhelmed by the smoke in the closed room and the inside of his head thrums. It takes a lot of the world to make James Bond lose his cool, the certain feeling that he can delegate his enemies and come out victorious; but Bond has lived long enough to feel that, more than once.

-

Bond has few memories of his father, remembers him mostly in short images from his childhood, like photographs, remembers his blue eyes.

Andrew was calm but capable of violence. James always had the feeling his father was one of these men who would voluntarily go to war. Once at home, after dinner, James heard voices in the dining room, and because of the anguished sound of his mother’s voice he decided to come downstairs, even if afraid. 

In front of the table the both of them were arguing: his mother intimidated, his father waving his arms threateningly. It doesn’t take much age or training to understand the signs of abuse, so he went straight for the kitchen without thinking twice.

And then in the dining room, with the knife at hand, he shouted at his father from behind, “Don’t you dare touch my mum, dad”. 

His father turned and the surprise changed his face, relaxed his shoulders, changed his colour. 

“James,” he said, and kneeled in front of him, in all his memories Andrew Bond was so tall, “I’m sorry James,” he said, with his blue eyes, “I would never, I’m sorry James.” 

Bond knows his love can kill, he’s always thought that it might even be by his own hand.

-

Years ago, when Vesper decided to die, Bond took the blame. For not being efficient, for not doing well with anything, neither his job or his life with her. 

He swore to know her by memory. He, who saw her suffer upon death, couldn’t see that when she left him in bed, she was leaving to die. He was weak like that. 

His love, by his hand or not, killed her, in Venice, Vesper in her red dress. 

Ah, Bond would like a martini, but instead has some more of that cheap vodka, looks at the red wall. 

It’s always so devastating when a woman tells him the truth like he’s a child. Bond takes another drink thinking of Beatriz, because she had the same fear of death Vesper had. 

Perhaps Bond would have fallen in love with Beatriz, if Vesper hadn't happened, but Bond was never the same. This is not his first mission; today he’s somewhat wiser, an older dog. 

Not without some remorse, Bond has chosen the job first, mostly because he doesn’t know what else he could do with his life. Being good at everything he does, he is in control of this: the mission and the order, of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, of his conviction to channel violence, to hopefully end the war, as unattainable as that goal seems. 

It’s the war and to kill, it’s what he’s the best at.

The war that tears love apart, that made M say on the line everyone could hear, “Take the bloody shot.”

-

Bond died, in many ways, when he fell down into the river and the sea forgave his life, and left him where the waters met. 

All his dedication and loyalty had no point in the water, all the shot wounds and the stabs in the back, all the poker hands and the martinis drunk, the orders at two in the morning, the trips to the other side of the world, the deaths were in vain. Bond was abandoned and alone on the beach. 

It killed him inside, many times at night drinking with scorpions, and having only head for fucking, and no strength in the wounded arm even thought it was a scar long ago. Bond usually heals fast, doesn’t feel pain, but from the fall the bones he didn’t break hurt just the same, deep, deep, underneath the ribs, because his heart hurt. 

He asked himself the motive of it all, the long hours training, the expeditions he doubted to come back from, the first mission where they all knew a little more than him, when his only information was a piece of paper and no licence to kill. He wondered about his path and his choices and all the times he believed in M like a caveman believes in fire. 

He drank all the alcohol he could touch, beer and whisky and rum for everyone, double for him and more. 

Even if furious and in pain, Bond couldn’t stand to see his side lose the game, so he had to get out of the grave. 

M arrived home like every night, to her new house, the one Bond pretended to not know about; and he had drunk her alcohol waiting, all healed and old, just to display for her all his open wounds. 

_Ah, M_ , Bond thinks, drinking miserably and smoking the last cigarette of the pack, _I’m glad you never apologized._

She was kind right at the end, and Bond had to lose her, right where his parents were buried, there in that nobody’s land because Bond had abandoned it, there she had to leave him.

-

With his body numb after doing push ups with his arms beaten, partially drunk, to cancel pain with pain; Bond remembers the sound of the explosion the morning of his promotion to Commander, because he is having just the same feeling that passing out is a close call. 

The expansive wave didn't kill him that day, but among the debris and torn pieces of the podium where they were doing the ceremony, his superiors laid gravely wounded or dead. Without hearing the shots Bond saw the mercenaries cross the courtyard in his direction, and he searched on autopilot for a gun among the disaster. 

It didn't take long for Bond to understand he had aided intelligence that afternoon.

Everyone from the Secret Services that came that day looked like a civilian, but they fought better than half the marines Bond had ever met, all of them with their Walther PPKs and earpieces. 

Bond’s first MI6 mission was not ordered, Bond just didn’t let himself die. That night he walked into the river house, but to one of the floors that don’t show up on the elevator. 

Of course he didn’t meet her, M; nor Tanner, or the old Q. 

After a short wait, Omar, a _civilian_ with a PPK, came back to the waiting room.

“We train three hours before dawn in the Richmond, available?” he asked. 

“It’d be a pleasure,” said Bond. 

Omar smiled at him and handed him over a two paged form: name, address, phone, ID; he looked up, Omar still smiled. 

“Human resources need to know where to pay you, Commander.”

Bond had filled out a very similar form on his last job placement, but also a contract, a job description, and all that requisite paperwork from the army. It made sense that MI6 gave him a payroll authorization form to access his bank account, because that meant his job description was confidential. The job that day must have been, and Bond had proved to be good at it. 

So he arrived to begin his training. After a couple days he was allowed into the gym. There he decided to get face first into sparing with a man some five years older than him, lighter, obviously experienced. 

And he was down with a good punch to the face in fifteen seconds. It felt like that everyday for weeks, and not just the combat training. Everything got him hard: the information, all which he didn’t understand; everything he had to learn, the classes, the books to study. 

Six months later Bond could read a page with a short look and memorize a good part of it. He could stay underwater longer and run much farther than he thought possible. He was a better shot than ever. It took him a lot of focus, a lot of will to educate his body, to channel the flow of his senses, but he started to get into the game. 

The man who left him unconscious that first day, the son of a bitch, was OO1. After a year in, Bond knows three of his names and two of his addresses, has gotten drunk with him a couple times and now can fight him until they are both fatigued. 

Good days, long days of falling asleep too tired to dream, with numbers and dates, with strategy books, gun references and wishful women. 

Years after the contract, of all the missions, of a lot of training, he found himself polishing his shoes in the men’s locker room, because today he’ll have a couple hours to go to the casino, when someone said, “I heard you’re an orphan.” 

Bond turned around to see her, a purple dress, white hair, and eyes that saw deep into this world. 

It didn’t seem like she expected him to tell a sad story, so Bond said, “Yes ma'am,” sure she knew it already. 

She nodded shortly, didn’t say sorry like most people did, but gave a light tap with her heel and before turning around, said, “Tanner will personally deliver your new training plan, be prepared.” 

“Understood, M,” he said, and she nodded slowly, like he’d said exactly what he was supposed to.

-

After the Chinese for dinner, when the smoke has cleared, not so drunk because the vodka is more or less an aperitif, he remembers the rainy morning M herself explained to them how the radio frequencies worked during the Cold War - how the code was made, how to deduce the pattern, and also how the system was still active and how it was an obligation of every agent, and the division in general, to have the radio frequency clearly in mind, the code for the letters, the numbers, key words. Even though it was obsolete, tedious, and long. Back then Bond was already accustomed to memorizing a lot with one look. and had no problem doing so. 

So it’s very obvious - and makes a lot of sense, that Bond always knew what he was doing, that M never left him alone, that surely Q is in front of some computer with that in mind, because it was M who put him there, because he’s a smart kid. 

When Bond goes into the bathroom like he’s done every night, at irregular times to pretend he shits before sleeping, he stands underneath the shower and undoes it with one hand out of practice. Then knocks on the microphone: one, two, twenty and forty times, until the code is complete, until he’s sure he said everything he knows, and then walks out of the bathroom because he’s got between five and ten seconds before he raises suspicions, and feels in his gut the vertigo of victory. 

Now he only has to kill them all.

-

Since it takes them almost an hour, he guesses he’s close to La Paz. 

Bond thinks of Q while lying on the bed, maybe because of the smell of the vodka he just finished. Thinks of his bad clothing and his mind ahead of others, his almost telepathic gift to understand what’s needed in the field, his secret way to be powerful, just like the old Q and nothing like him; silly and almost childish, tousled, prone to laugh at his own jokes, tall, thin, pretty. 

Bond could cause him harm, he thinks unwillingly, but conscious that it might happen. 

At the same time it’s Q who causes the sudden blackout, the click of liberation, the rattle downstairs. Bond hears about it for the first time, because the door is open. 

In the dark but bloody free, hopefully he’ll never have to put together a radio again. It’s been hell to become Q with garbage in captivity. 

There’s shooting, the light comes back on, Street Fighting Man by the Rolling Stones plays faintly, and the martial artist whose hands have been sliding food into his cell has a face, comes inside and pushes him. And Bond knows him, Bond’s almost sure to have made him lose that eye he doesn’t have. 

The man says with a grunt, “I’m gonna break you right now before they try to get you out of here, you son of a bitch.” 

Bond jumps towards him like a spring because what a blessing it is to have a good fight, to be able to hit back.

Bond takes four punches, two in the ribs that knock his breath out, one in the nose and another in the scar on his shoulder. But finally he manages to pull out the gun the man’s got between his arse and his back, and blows his face to pieces. It isn’t exactly aesthetic, but it is momentarily satisfactory. 

Bond gets out of the room like lighting and among the noise and the shots he doesn’t hear the person he crashes into, before shooting he can almost see their face and recognizes the posture of another killer. 

“Felix,” he says, even more relieved than he’d be on an analgesic.

“I’m drunk on very bad vodka, that was what almost drove me mad,” Felix says while still aiming, they smile at each other, and then aim down the hall, and Felix speaks again. “James Bond bastard, was it Q?”

Bond feels like having a vodka, maybe with Q, to vindicate the situation. He nods to Felix, wonders what Q would think of a Vesper, how many could he handle before talking slurred.

War calls them and they both walk. Bond thinks of England, of the hellish weather and the awful porcelain dog M left for him that’s in his office, in the same drawer with the extra ammunition Q gave him one day.

Q with his eyes glued to a screen in his main lab.

“Magazines,” said Q back then, pointing at a table with a pile of them. “Magazines everywhere, take ten.”

Bond takes the stairs down with Felix, thinking of bullets, hoping to be back home.


	4. Home

Bond kills Silvio, Aristos, Matamoros, Dora and Catalina, then Esteban and Andreas. With Felix they kill Carolina Andaur together. Several are captured, and many more are killed by the team that came to collect information, to take the house.

Felix and Bond walk out of the four story building that worked as HQ in Bolivia. There’s a whole deployment of cars and ambulances outside, the shooting has ended and forensics descend like they’ve been waiting.

A very pretty girl in a nurse uniform, who makes Bond feel poorly dressed and maybe too old for her, asks with alarm if they need any help, and the truth is they would have been carried out on stretchers if spies weren’t such prideful creatures.

“It’s only two broken ribs, I’m not disabled, shit, don’t show me that chair,” says Félix to a doctor when they get into the hospital. They are surrounded by black uniforms, still holding their guns.

It’s an army hospital. They get attention, barefoot and bearded as they are, wearing gray pajamas stained with blood.

Bond has yet to see the day he comes in to get a bone put back in place or a bullet pulled out, when they actually manage to keep him in the hospital under the pretext of needing to rest.

-

Felix, putting on a jacket he stole from a doctor and the sneakers he took from a patient, says at the exit, “I’m going home, bro.”

Bond guesses he should do the same, walks out in a haze, looking at the clear La Paz sky at night. There’s an eclipse, and the moon is red, and Bond was lost but now goes home. He has to win tomorrow, just powered by pride it’d be enough, but more than that Bond considers it his duty, his job.

Felix takes a cab that evidently isn’t a cab, Bond knows the CIA is everywhere and wonders how long it’ll take him to reach the next public phone to make a call. Some eight minutes, tops.

Years ago, just after Vesper, Bond stayed in Bolivia. With too much time on his hands from not being able to sleep, and for training, he memorized the cartography of the capital, drinking martinis.

He buttons up the jumper he took from a chair, and sees a flock of honeycreepers land on a tree on the street. It doesn’t distract him. He hears the footsteps, and before taking the corner a woman’s voice says, “OO7.”

Back then, soon after his first time in Bolivia, M introduced him to a woman he knew from the mountains where many of the Secret Service go for a run. Meter and a half tall, swarthy and green eyed. M told him, “This is Simona Hawks.”

“OO5,” says Bond, when he sees her take off her helmet from the S.W.A.T. team, and realizes that she was the one sent over. It’s a good choice because Simona is the second OO with the longest active duty time after him. The years have made her stronger, Bond believes. She’s almost forty, but Bond watched her train a couple months ago, and saw her perform a triple twist, like a gymnast from the Olympics.

It’s Simona who takes him home that night. She undoes her uniform walking beside him, telling him in key codes and passwords who has gotten involved, who has given in, and who has collaborated. Then, when they reach the main street through the neighborhood, she flags down a bus that appears on the horizon. Bond watches it stop. Evidently it’s not just any bus.

Everything is in its place, the driver and the seats, identical to the local service, maybe actually local service, but the man driving has to be an agent, someone with high clearance. He’s listening to boleros, anyway. With a full assault team on board, most of them deeply asleep, Figueroa plays.

_ Tú eres la bendición que mi alma espera, _

_ la más grande ilusión, de mis anhelos _ .

Poetry is so beautiful in every language. Bond feels he’s listening to the best song in the world, that this one night is blessed, and the relief of being alive is most pleasurable, like he had been feeling pain for a long time and not anymore. Even though he’s recently sewed up, and the analgesics are still to kick in.

Simona pats him in the shoulder, says, “Bond,” and Bond opens his eyes. OO5 is handing him an earpiece.

He puts it on. The moment he does, into his ear Q says, “OO7.”

What would Q think of the radio he built, Bond wonders. The medication is suddenly doing it’s work.

“Q,” he says, “you got my message.”

“Of course,” Q says.

Bond smiles and stretches in the seat, listens to him talk about the meeting M has been in since the start of the operation. Q also explains to him that while tracking the message he understood how to infiltrate them, and that he’s still downloading data. Bond hears him slide on his chair from one place to the other in his laboratory, and pictures him with dark circles, because in his voice is evidence he hasn’t slept. Bond’s almost sure he hears him drink something.

It’s profoundly mundane, and Bond feels well drugged and happy to be back.

M gets on the line kind of abruptly, but it’s fine. He says, “I’m glad to have you back, OO7.”

He will never be her, his white indestructible M. He will always be someone with less experience than Bond himself, but M’s sincerity is clear and his orders are always precise. Bond is glad to hear his voice.

-

Bond arrives in such a good mood to the first plane, he decides not to sleep. Instead he makes a bold effort to empty the mini bar of champagne, and the best thing about it is that they have  _ Bollinger _ .

For each one of the bitter cheap sips of vodka in that red cage, he has a glass, and then for everything his M made sure he knew, he has another.

He finds many reasons to toast, has a bottle and a half.

Cheers on Q.

-

When he gets out of the plane in London, Tanner himself is waiting for him at the check in for international flights, like a relative. Bond smiles; it’s even honest.

Tanner hands him hot coffee and Bond sips it. It’s too bitter and shallow of flavour, but he says, “Thank you.”

In the car Tanner tells him that he will have to go through the usual tests to determine if he is fit for duty, and he says it with a mild tone of voice, but there’s something hairy in the air.

The last time Bond hadn’t really passed the tests, and this time he’s also wounded. Yet, M sent the Chief of Staff to get him. Bond lost, but has never felt better than right now, he’s ready to run a marathon, steady to fire precisely, easy minded to think better, and concludes that at some point losing must be turned into winning.

“I’m here,” he says.

-

MI6’s doctors lock him up in a glass cube, dress him with anti allergenic clothes, and tell him he has to rest, let those wounds heal –that he’s got bruises and stitches and a bone recently put back where it should be. They recommend that he not leave, and to sleep in a bed right there.

Bond says yes to all of it and is laughing at them on the inside, because of what they think of him. But then these doctors have always been like this, too innocent for the spies they patch up.

Bond has a decent amount of analgesics in his I.V. They say M will come see him tomorrow, and leave without locking the door.

Bond slept more than enough between flights. When the lights go off in the hallway, he’s thinking about the suit he left over the bed the last time he was at home, and wishes to wear it and go to the casino.

So he squishes the bag of medicine and unplugs it.

After the last cell he was locked into, getting out of this cell is too easy.

-

Bond is very familiar with these hallways, knows where to find the clothes he needs to borrow, knows where to get out without being seen. He wonders if he needs to bother with all this sneaking around, but he disposes himself to stealth by habit.

And then at three in the morning, from a dark laboratory, a door opens and Bond gets into the corner just a little surprised. Q is going somewhere, hasn’t seen him.

Bond steps out of the corner, notices Q is holding a cup of tea.

Moreover he’s wearing that awful jacket he wore the day they met. And he looks older than Bond remembers him. Maybe it’s due to Bond trusting him more, or to him cutting his hair a little.

“OO7,” says Q, looking at his face, more surprised than Bond, without remarking on his stolen sweater and the pajamas pants of the medical unit, just relief on his face, in his green eyes. “You came back.”

Bond smiles and Q makes a weird face, almost a smile too, and then seems to process him suddenly, look him up and down. “Hm,” he whispers, and Bond wonders if Q is going to give him away, guesses so, it’s his job.

Then Q says, “Come,” and goes into his dark lab like he knows it from memory and doesn’t need light.

Bond follows, mildly intrigued, and Q comes out white from the shadows, with a PPK in his hand, and a radio.

“Yesterday I told M and he agreed, but this is not official, take them,” Q says, “never let them see you bleed, OO7.”

Bond takes the gun from him in the partial dark, the weight of it is warm and it recognizes his hand, shining green for a second. Bond feels light on his feet. Puts the gun in the pocket of the jacket and with the radio on his hand says to Q, very seriously, “Thank you.”

Q smiles looking somewhere else. Before Bond can read him more, he passes him by and walks into the hallway. “M will be here by eight,” he says. “Don’t make me find you tomorrow as well.”

Bond watches him go and feels awaited, and kind of moved, and wonders if he’s getting old.

-

Bond arrives in Royal Street and is sure something’s not right. He stands a moment behind the shadow of a tree, looks between the houses, looks for that which is out of place, sees his door and feels uneasy.

So he enters using the roof. The maneuver is not easy because the stitches strain and even though he feels nothing he realises he’s bleeding a little. But the house is empty.

Everything seems normal until Bond opens the trapdoor he installed, and the floor of the study is messy, papers scattered.

Bond almost wishes they had sold the place when he disappeared, instead of having to find his house checked out and scrambled. It’s offensive, but surely it was under M’s orders, inevitable enough to not take it personally. He’s not less bothered.

Bond cannot pretend he keeps all the secrets he’d like to himself, because since he’s at the river house there’s a file on him, things he doesn’t understand, things he might not remember anymore with certainty, all the missions and all his life. Bond knows to whom he renders account, doesn’t fear it.

Those mind doctors will ask him about the alcohol again, of course, because they must know  _ again _ that Bond has exquisite taste and a fantastic collection. He checks it out very angrily but finds it almost intact, sighs half relieved and supposes this act of generosity could only come from a friend in charge.

Anyway, the flat is a mess because it was raided, the books are misplaced on the floor, the chairs are tipped backwards, the rug is draped over the table, the picture frames in the kitchen, the plates in the sink, the clothes hooked off.

Bond gets into the shower irritated.

He cleans up his wounds, has a drink of some old scotch and chooses a white shirt from the clothes they left hanging, some trousers, and a dark blue coat, puts on the leather holster and the PPK against his ribs. His tailored clothes make him feel comfortable in his body again, the smell of aftershave clears his mind.

When he’s ready to leave he thinks of Sophia in the casino, and the hands he’d like to win; but also in not wanting to come back here, to feel trapped among the chaos of his own things. He feels in a bad way.

In the living room he calls Moneypenny, looking at the street from above, and she answers with a quickness thas implies she saw the number that called her, says “James,” with relief.

How pretty she is, Moneypenny.

“Moneypenny,” he says, “they were in my home,” straight on, not growling too much.

Moneypenny says, “I’m glad I didn’t have to sell your house again.”

“I didn’t want to keep you waiting so long this time around.”

She laughs, and even though she said she doesn’t wait for him, she says, “Good,” and also, “It’s not the same without you.”

Bond almost contemplates going to her place, maybe take a bottle with him. But Bond hears a voice saying softly “baby what,” and then it’s evident to Bond. Moneypenny is married, or in a stable relationship, perhaps of years.

“Moneypenny,” says Bond, “it’ll always be good to come back to you,” and while she laughs, “tell M to come and get me by noon, please.”

She’s still smiling as she says, “Sure thing James.” Bond can hear it in her voice, the mischief of knowing a secret. “Have a good night.”

Bond takes with him the bottle of whisky he started and a deck of cards he casually finds on the floor in front of the door.

-

Q expects no visitors, lives alone and has the casual mess of a single person that spends more time at work than home. There’s food for the cats, there’s a clock in the living room wall, there’s a security camera in the hallway of the building. There’s one awful buttoned jumper that Q must have gotten on discount, as crumpled as a raisin on the bed.

Bond comes in through the bathroom window, the one with the free fall, because he’s partly drunk and instinctively it seems the best choice. That one turns out to be the only one with no light wiring. Bond believes it to be a security system. The moment he jumps inside, the first cat digs his claws into his shin and the other hisses from the darkness.

Bond settles in after appeasing the cats, glad to have a quiet place to decompress. Before allowing himself to meditate on the specifics of being here, he sits on the settee in the living room and on the coffee table he places the cards and the bottle.

-

Q gets home half an hour before dawn. Bond is playing his third hand of solitaire, has had the calmest morning, and the whisky tastes better with every drink.

When Q jumps with the door half open, Bond doesn’t move so as not to look threatening, Q seems to recognize him in the gloom of the room. Still, the aborted movement he made told Bond he has a gun in one of the bags he’s carrying, maybe the PPK from last time.

One of the cats jumps from Bond’s lap towards the door. Q walks into the flat closing it behind him and, maneuvering the bags he’s carrying, tries to greet the cat.

Q feigns calm while leaving what he brought on a chair. 

“Good morning Q,” says Bond, having a drink.

Q walks with a cat on one arm to the window, opens the curtain. It’s still dark outside.

“Why are you here, OO7?” Q asks him, as if Bond could possibly answer that.

Bond ignores the thing he feels in his gut. It’s a trained feature for him, really, to carry on the mind as little as he can. So flirting he says, “I thought of saving you the trouble of looking for me.”

Drinking, Bond thinks that’s no lie. Q almost laughs and with the gray sky behind him, tells him M surely would’ve had Tanner look for him. Bond doesn’t stop to decide whether Q avoided the flirtation or if he’s intimidated somehow.

“I also brought something for you.”

Q observes the radio made out of raw wire and doesn’t turn on the lights, but comes and sits beside Bond. While the sun rises Q looks at the tips where contact was made, what Bond created inside that box. Bond distinguishes Q’s dark circles and sees him exhausted but comfortable, and Q looks at the radio like he can see the box himself.

Q whispers, after almost speaking a couple times,“You must have burned yourself with this,” and then, “an electrical shower.”

So smart, Q.

Bond nods, and confesses he came because his flat was searched when he went missing, and Q of course knows, tells him while still looking at the radio, “I did see the footage.”

Bond laughs with no air and not amused, says, “It was only fair to also invade,” and offers Q a drink because he feels warm inside. He moves a card while pouring because he sees the play on the table.

Q takes the drink and says, “Guess you can stay,” It makes Bond smile. Q tells him, a second later, all displeasure. “This is the first piece of equipment you’ve given back to me, and this one I didn’t even give you.” He bumps their glasses. “Cheers Bond.”

Of course Bond drinks with him and places the glass down and smiles with intentions. Q makes a face when swallowing the drink, then looks at him. There is enough light to see his pupils open up. Q almost smiles back but instead looks somewhere else, the pink light of the dawn on his face. Bond can almost hear him thinking out loud.

Fortunately, Bond is very good at reading signals, so he lifts the cat that settled between them on the settee and says, “Q,” like a mandate, and Q turns back to look at him as if Bond could be read like a book. He blinks but his eyes stay closed.

Q puts a hand on Bond’s chest while they kiss, and Bond thinks it’s not fortuitous to be here and now, because since he left the shower he pocketed the radio; and it’s not complicated, nor is it heavy. Q tastes a little like whisky. His kisses are soft and it’s Bond who makes a satisfied sound at having him close.

Q says, “I didn’t think this would happen again,” and when Bond with a hand in his hair asks why, Q says, conflicted, “I fell asleep.”

Bond hadn’t thought about it. Possibly because that day he had to close his eyes in the bathroom. But today his chest is hot under Q’s hand and he has every intention to look.

He asks, “Are you going to fall asleep today?”

Q shakes his head, says, “No,” and then, “Kiss me.”

-

Q’s room is dim that morning because the curtains are partly closed, and Q seems to have deduced where his wounds are because his hands are kind and his kisses make Bond feel anesthetized. On the bed they’ve taken off their clothes partly, and Q pauses, he looks inexperienced, maybe, Bond can’t tell.

Nevertheless, it is Q who guides Bond’s hands down his body. When Bond touches him, Q rolls his eyes, and his arse.

Bond kisses him open mouthed and fucks him slow, and wonders if Q has ever been in love, if his hesitation is related to reservations or fear.

But Q is not afraid of him. Q opens his legs underneath Bond, and with his shirt and jumper still on, looks at him, green eyes going out of focus, “Ah.” Q feels so good. Bond settles into a rhythm and feels overwhelmed, by the smell of sex and the numb pain of his body, and by Q and his sounds, his fingers clawing on Bond’s arms.

Bond touches him where Q’s taking him, gently. Touches him with one hand on his cock as well, and Q gets hard very fast and his pleasure is obvious.

“Ah,” softly, “Bond.”

When Q finishes his whole body quivers and his face blushes far down. And Bond thinks he wants to do this to him, more, so much that between the late spasms inside him, Bond comes without controlling it.

Strange what kidnapping and torture do to good training, Bond thinks.

-

They undress all the way and clean up, Bond takes off the condom and they give each other a couple of sleepy kisses, then Bond for some reason thinks of that summer day when M got her blood pressure high and the paramedics ran in front of Bond’s office on the way up.

She was apparently unaffected when Bond saw her, as soon as Tanner let him through, with a canalized serum and an odd look on her face. The paramedics left with their diligent jog and before even regarding him, M answered two phone calls and at the end of the last one said, “If you want me out of my post you might as well come and shoot me, then, I’m fine.”

And then she looked at him, and Bond guessed she was tired, but they have had a couple of bad days in Cancun and two bad ops in Australia. Stuff happens, and Bond has been waiting to be sent somewhere to mitigate the affairs.

“I never thought this would happen to me,” said she, not even saying hello, and Bond saw her stoic and white as always, and very foolishly asked, “To have your blood pressure go up?”

She moved a hand to deny. “No,” she said. “I never thought I would get old.”

Then she laughed a little, the weirdest gesture, Bond rarely saw it so transparent. It was a little incompresible back then.

Q smiles and is naked face down on his bed. Bond is beside him, and remembers how long ago, when M made him a double-O, he expected a short service.

Q looks at him and Bond smiles, resurrected.

Bond kisses Q very nicely The day has started fully and the sun is warm over the foot of the bed. Bond thinks he might be getting old for real, that maybe his endurance for a good lay and a pair of pretty green eyes isn’t the same anymore.

Bond grabs one of Q’s arse cheeks and all of it fits inside his hand.

Q slides a hand among the bruises on his ribs and over the line of hair under his belly button, and then is touching his cock while they kiss and Bond realises he hasn’t stopped being hard, and wants to slam him suddenly.

Q asks, “fuck me again?” and Bond turns around and gets on top of him and nothing hurts.

This time it lasts longer and Bond pushes him against the mattress and keeps him face down until Q does something erratic with his hips and his voice cracks, maybe overstimulated, or not used to it, or maybe enjoying it. Bond slaps him and spreads his arse to see where and how he’s fucking him.

And it’s inevitable. Bond grunts and moans a little and comes again, kissing Q’s neck from behind, sticking to Q’s body with the sun on his legs. Q trembles again, maybe harder than before, and comes as well. Bond touches him and feels the sheets wet and Q doesn’t stop moving against him and the bed, arrhythmic and brutal.

“Hm,” Bond grabs him by the hip, sensitive, “Q.”

At the end Bond falls asleep while Q covers them with the duvet.

-

Bond arrives at MI6 at five minutes to noon, says hello to the watchman who’s actually an agent he worked with once in Ulan Bator, walks the hallways with a light step and feels clean from the shower he took at his flat. Considering he only slept a couple hours he feels more than functional.

Moneypenny looks at him like she saw him coming, and is smiling.

“Beautiful as always, Moneypenny.”

“You look like you were on vacation, James.”

Bond is an expert at hiding and forgetting the general pains of the body, and knowing that the discomfort beneath the ribs will last at least two weeks. Moneypenny looks at him with sure complicity. Bond takes for granted that she knows the condition he was in when found.

“Everything in its place and functioning,” says Bond, because it’s true. He smiles a little. “Though I could use a massage.”

Moneypenny almost rolls her eyes, but she looks amused, says, “I doubt M will help with that,” and points at the door, “he’s waiting for you.”

-

M is reading a report with an enlarged picture of a Carl Gustav M/45, also known as an original Swedish K. Bond is always in the mood for a Swedish K, there’s little as formal as to be pointed at with one, and less things as piercing as shooting one. M doesn’t close the report.

“OO7.”

“M.”

M stands up and round his desk, before Bond is close, M’s in front of him.

“There’s a lot to do,” M says, his expression serious but open. Bond feels complicity again. “Do you believe you’re ready to do it?” asks M.

Bond looks at M’s face for a moment, who’s almost as young as Bond, or almost as old, and realises the alienation almost made him feel alone again, with no course. But M has orders to give, matters to resolve, a country to defend, people to protect. And Bond is home, where he’s needed.

“Of course,” he says.

“Good,” says M, and Bond remembers the first time they met and Mallory told him this is a young man’s game and not to be afraid to leave, but now M looks at him without filtering his relief, and tells him, “Very good news to have you back. Go do the tests soon.”

-

Bond comes out of the office and Moneypenny tells him everything is scheduled, that he only has to go down to see the physiotherapist. She’s typing while listening to Vivaldi on low volume.

“Tanner will be down stairs soon as well.”

“What would I do without you, Moneypenny?”

She looks at him like a cat. “You’d be lost, but it was Q who arranged everything yesterday.”

Bond laughs and says goodbye.

-

Downstairs there’s a pretty doctor who must be new on the job. Bond beams at her when he comes in and her eyes shine.

She says with a huge smile, “I know you will try to hide every kind of pain, so I assume you shouldn’t even be walking around.”

All these doctors are hell. Bond sighs, lets himself be patched and sensored, his blood pressure is taken, his heartbeat measured She listens to his lungs while he breathes and also looks inside his mouth. She says at the end with a clairvoyant face that Bond recognizes as a lot of analysis, “That shoulder must be unbearable.”

Bond looks with mild surprise at his scar that doesn’t hurt, and she stabs him with her fingers on the ribs. Bond can’t help a tiny hop of pain. She stares plainly at him.

“There’s ointments for the pain, but nothings out of place. And it’s the other shoulder, the one not looking good.”

Bond is beaten up more or less everywhere. She checks his shoulders for a while and Bond bitterly allows it.

Then Tanner arrives to read a huge file to him, and he’s sent to physical performance.

-

That night he makes it to the flat and the mess welcomes him in the dark. With tired legs and numb arms he picks up the chairs and the clothes and places the carpet in its place and all the unhanged paintings against their walls, everything the way he had them. When he’s done he has a drink of rum in the living room and thinks for the first time that for him to have lived here for months he hasn’t decorated anything and the house looks empty and not lived in.

Besides, the TV doesn’t even have a stand, there’s stuff still in boxes, and the only thing organized is the fancy wood shelf for his alcohol and his cuban cigars.

It looks like his flat when he was twenty. It makes him laugh.

He decides to call Felix.

-

They speak in codes and bad jokes for several minutes. Bond picks up the papers in the studio, the clothes from the laundry room, the dishes in the kitchen. And realises Felix knows what he knows, except Bond knows there was someone they couldn’t rescue and surely is in Israel.

They describe the state of their wounds like someone checking a car, and they toast over the phone without running out of conversation topics. 

Then Felix says, “I talked to all my sources, after the third one I spoke to everyone else because it’s unusual for it to be so hard.”

Bond barks a “What?” and Felix laughs at him.

“As a last resort I got access to the best software to search data, and after an hour of playing with it looking for the name of your man, I realized he was the one who invented the software.”

_ Ah _ , thinks Bond. Of course.

“I feel like an idiot, James. That Q kid fucked with my head. I think there’s no other option.”

“That’s what I feared,” says Bond, who never thought of getting that name other than the radical.

Since well before becoming a OO, Bond hasn’t gone to visit the Record Keeper.


	5. The Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like the idea of 'double-oh' standing for Overseas Operative, that's why I write it OO7, because I imagine the characters saying it like that.   
> In Spanish, my native language, we call him 007, like zero-zero seven. And I wanted him to be OO7, I imagine the characters talking in English even if the original is in Spanish, so that's my reason (not like anyone asked, but yes).  
> I read somewhere that 007 stands for 'eyes only' as in the zeros being eyes (?), so it means the agent does highly confidential work/has license to kill.  
> I like both ideas. There's two cocktail facts for you.
> 
> [UP2L8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UP2L8/pseuds/UP2L8) read my work after I translated it and has done a great job, best beta.
> 
> Cheers, thank you for the comments and kudos so far.

On the way out MI6, he winks at the receptionist, a cute blondie very good with a semi-automatic. Bond met her nine years ago; every day she gets prettier.

The city is cold and Bond thinks it insufferable on his rib pain, his beaten face. It’s a perfect afternoon like any other to go to another world, Bond guesses.

_ James Bond, _ one meter seventy eight tall, forty-five years old, blond hair, blue eyes, white, athletic, eighty-three kilos, extremely dangerous, active, based in London, license to kill, participated in [redacted].

The light goes green, Bond turns, evades the camera on the mall, tightens his hat in front of the mirror of the barber shop and takes a quick look at the man following him since two blocks ago.

It’s the same as always. Bond casually smiles at him.

Bond outwits all the cameras with fussy care, even uses the trick on the roof in Smith Street. In the park ahead he looks for the man by the taxis, and asks him for a ride to the south. He doubles, pays two  _ obolos _ .

Then the couples in the park scatter among the houses, the voices and the far away music stops and even the barking dogs quiet. A man in red appears between the houses, says hello with a wide gesture. Bond smiles, and the game begins.

Bond has come four times, to the place in London where the world ends.

Years ago the streets weren’t the same, because now the houses are different, the facades and the corners, the colours of the roofs. They take two right turns, and a mechanical vibration that Bond can’t identify sounds, and by the third corner Bond can’t tell where he is.

Bond will always wonder how this happens. When does the horizon switch? How do they change which house? The cannon at six fires, as always. Bond looks back; nobody on the rooftops. For all he knows, it’s hypnosis.

No camera, not a soul on the nonexistent street. Bond crosses the empty avenue, bids farewell to the man in red who has already turned around.

Bond knocks four times on the door and after three seconds walks in, because it’s open.

The Record Keeper awaits him, sitting beside his Browning M2HB, a huge machine gun. He’s looking at the coins with a magnifying glass. Then the Keeper meets his eye with clear amusement.

“You brought me an actual obolo this time. I’ll put it in my collection. It’s been years since my last good hunt, and the other one is a pretty scrap of metal,” says the Keeper.

Bond smiles. “I was in Greece a couple weeks ago.”

“I doubt the bother was only due to you being fond of me, dear Jimmy.”

The Keeper looks ten years older but that’s just natural. Bond sits in the chair in front of the desk, details the brunette face and the red hair, the goat beard, the brown eyes.

“I’m looking for a name.”

The Keeper laughs and disappears behind the desk with an odd movement. When he comes back he’s holding a box in his hands. “Always a name Jimmy. Who do you want to know this time around?”

Bond receives the cigar the Keeper extends him. Before he speaks the Keeper says, “For whomever it is, two conditions, because we’re acquaintances.”

Bond says, “Q.”

“Three conditions,” says the Keeper at once. Bond almost starts to bargain before the Keeper continues, “and a favor.”

Bond resigns.“Deal.” 

With M’s name, back on it’s day, there were two conditions and two favors. After doing those favors Bond had nightmares for a month. But at this point, in front of the HMG, it is almost out of curiosity one helps the ones higher up.

The first condition is a chess game. Bond knows the dynamic; the second is a bottle of 43’ Blanc de Blanc Brut.

“The third is the navy blue Tom Ford with the disjointed button; you had it in Morocco last year,” says the Keeper, obviating the firsts, very serious. Bond watches him unblinking, thinking of his suit as he left it, ironed, hanging at home, and wonders how the Keeper knows about the button.

“All right,” he says, The Keeper is a creature from another plane, Bond has learned.

“The favor is a secret and it’s already redacted.”

Bond knows the request will come home. “And the game?” he asks.

“Already started.”

When Bond gets back to London that night, there’s a voice message on his home phone. A woman with Swedish accent tells him “Cbc3, dear Jimmy,” and in the background it sounds like she’s making the move on the board.

-

Next day, Bond whispers to the pigeon man in front of the bank that horse takes pawn. The man nods and writes down a note on a little roll of paper.

Today M will read him the results of his tests. Bond’s been thinking about the porcelain dog since he woke up, about putting it out on his desk, awful as it is.

The one who stops him in his tracks is none other than M himself, oddly, outside the elevator near Bond’s office. M looks at him like something extraordinary just happened, exasperated.

“OO7,” he says, and Bond notices M has a drink in his hand, thinks about their meeting being in two hours time. “Someone who doesn’t exist, but who outranks me, made a very urgent, very peculiar request,” and M does a gesture with his hand pointing up. “To my office.”

-

Bond reads the file with one look, gives it a second once over to commit the Armenian words to memory, and then rips the folder in half before throwing it into the office fireplace. It’s been a while since he took an unofficial assignment; he only wonders what the Keeper could want to know about pizzas.

“If it’s up to me, I’ll start right now,” says Bond to M, very self assured.

He might be a little worried, because the last time his body betrayed him it was his M who decided to trust the uncertain. This M looks at him across the table, checking his monitor briefly.

“Psychiatry says you’re an alcoholic, the laboratory says your liver is working miracles not letting you die, but the ballistic test is 10/10 overall, and the physiotherapist agrees with a good physical test.”

Bond says nothing but appreciates the sincerity.

“It seems it takes more to defeat you, ah Bond?” says M, most fondly with his plain face, “The tests aren’t so bad.”

The game should have killed him years ago as it has so many others. Bond thinks about life in general, and unsurprisingly, finds that as long as M has orders to give him, he will have missions to complete.

He feels ready. “I’m ready, sir,” he says.

M considers him for a moment and then tells him that the only surprise in the report had come from the assumption of a psychiatrist. “It’s only common for you to rebel against authority, mostly when you consider it less experienced than you.”

Bond won’t contradict a truth like that one.

“Do you still believe Q to be underqualified for his age? Here it says you seemed to hesitate regarding him,” M says.

_ Bizarre _ , Bond thinks, for them to read him as petulant, because Bond is. Nevertheless he’s surprised to have been assessed as doubting.

Bond speaks with the honesty saved for his M and nobody else. “Q is a good kid. I rather fancy him a lot”.

And M is every bit of what he has to be, of course, because he looks up from what he was reading, and the pen on the table with a long suffering sigh.

“For God’s sake,” he says, “now I know too much. Get to work.”

Bond doesn’t mask the unprofessional smile, instead carries it content to his office.

There he takes the porcelain dog, before leaving for the airport, and the dog watches him with it’s unmovable eyes while he crosses the office. Bond feels calm to be doing what his M expected him to do.

-

Q is in the back of one of his workshops. The crowded place smells like gunpowder and caffeine; the sound of welding and chatter is a constant vibration. Bond watches him from afar. Q is holding a light weapon, all metal; he loads it with six rounds of .44 magnum, and aims at a target in front of him.

Bond knows the obvious recoil of that gun. Q fires with his back to Bond, the movement practical and economical on his body. The ear protectors look enormous on his head even though his hair is tousled. At the back of the firing range Bond sees the shots hit very decently, a tight cluster in target.

Q looks at him without surprise when he sees him, and finishes disassembling the gun on the table. Bond wonders if it hurts him to fire that caliber, or if he does it so often as to not feel it, but he says nothing. It’s unsettling to see him there with his deceptively thin shoulders.

Q is strong. Bond never thought about it before.

“I’ll be back,” says Bond. Q looks at him with understanding eyes. “Even if it’s just for the cats.”

If they were somewhere else, perhaps Q would have blushed, but the brat looks at him with the same dispassionate professionalism he used to disassemble the weapon, says politely, “If I were you I’d be careful of the queen if he plays it as a tower, OO7. Good luck with whatever you’re after.”

Then Q gives him the usual equipment and leaves because he’s called. Bond watches him turn his back, and absentmindedly thinks of those shoulders again.

-

In Armenia he successfully infiltrates an investor’s cocktail party. They are actually traffic drugs, guns and prostitutes, as well as moving good caviar, not so oddly. He spends a big part of the night in one of the tables in the casino, in the smoking area of course, and plays hand after hand of baccarat until the blonde wife of his target, sits beside him.

“Bond,” says he, “James Bond.”

“Lipp,” says she, “Rosy Lipp.”

To her credit she has got a very pretty pink mouth. Bond invites her one hand and makes her laugh while winning, imagining her revealing secrets and doing other things done without clothing.

The night guides him to strange places. Just after Bond concludes his next chess move, outside the casino in the telephone booth by the lobby, a man laying on the floor shoots at him.

Half an hour later he is in the middle of hitting the accelerator and taking a corner when Rosy tells him that the problem isn’t her husband, but the hispanic man that came years ago and killed her brother in law.

“My husband and I have enough to leave the business, but we have to pay Perez'contract to keep ourselves alive. We’ve tried to run away. We’ve tried.”

It’s not the first time Bond does a job and finishes another along the way, but for a moment he feels misinformed while driving through the city, a beautiful woman undressing in the back.

After dawn Bond stops in the countryside and goes to the back seat. Without taking any clothes off he makes her quiver and tell all her truths.

He would have done more, but the husband chooses that moment to show up.

-

Bond is at his five star hotel by noon, with the suit ripped in one leg but still smelling like cologne. He washes off the dry blood from one of his arms in front of the mirror and wonders several times what this assignment for the Keeper and his mission share. It itches on his pride that he’s been played.

The evidence is the suit the Keeper asked for from his wardrobe, with the button fixed and golden details over the pockets and the cuffs. In the breast pocket is an envelope.

“Source: Gustavo Pérez Pineda, DAS, Colombia, 32 confirmed deaths, alliance with several corruption circles and black market. Target: Dikan, Armenia, paid assassin, 14 confirmed deaths. Today, Golden Crown Casino, 9:45 p.m., Rolex white gold.”

These killing requests for businessmen, who are criminals that handle governments, are always uglier than they look. The job is never clean.

He even gets a delivery after midnight,  _ International Exports, _ it says.

All set for a dress code party.

-

OO7 arrives at the Golden Crown Casino at 2100 hours, does recognition and infiltrates successfully. Dikan arrives at 2110 hours. They share a poker table for three hands and after acquiring information Bond proceeds to [redacted].

OO7 confirms status at [redacted] at 0300 hours, not injured, but killing [redacted] he had to use the [redacted] that Q sent to the field.

Due to complications he has to punt down [redacted] and his four companions.

The mission is successful, the [redacted] expressed his gratitude through direct contact in the city. OO7 reported details of the situation in [redacted] and in [redacted], along with the extraction and [redacted]. It’s unknown if [redacted] or if [redacted].

[redacted]

OO7 sent a short message to [redacted] that was [redacted].

-

By the time he understands what Perez has to do with the spy alliance and this particular corruption circle, he suspects he’s come to know too much to stay on the light. The Keeper’s man finishes registering on the report machine he’s got, smiles.

“That was a good play, James.”

Bond goes A.W.O.L. two minutes after the man disappears jumping theatrically into the sewer.

-

Bond has to take an absurd detour thanks to the migratory phenomenon, and crosses two borders with the gypsies to evade a bad scene. In a sewer in Paris he tightens his jacket and doesn’t stain his shoes, and two days later he’s in Portugal as he should be. He even managed to get Colombian coffee in Spain seven hours before.

He walks into the military headquarters like he was taught to in the old school, and when he sees the General, he’s glad not all things have changed in the world.

“Sergio,” he says to the big moustached man, and the General lifts his face and almost throws himself into Bond’s arms.

Safe, Bond gets drunk with Sergio and they speak in Portuguese about the war and that pretty turret they brought to the quarters recently, and then it’s time to go and Bond puts on the new jacket and even accepts a hat from Sergio, just in case.

At the dock the scent of the sea welcomes him, and Bond gets onboard the submarine with strange nostalgia.

M awaits him, and the office looks the same as he remembered, but he’s wearing the uniform and smoking a pipe, like she never used to.

“OO7,” says he, reading what appears to be his report, “what an interesting hand we have here, good job.”

He pours Bond a bourbon without putting down his cigarette or the report he continues to read, and this is identical, is coming home, the same war as always.

“With pleasure, M” says Bond, and cheers with him.

-

Once in London, Bond takes the rooftops on the way home and a pigeon catches up to him near Chancery Lane. Bond stops because it seems to be carrying something. Efficiently, the pigeon lands on an orange tube line. Bond stretches up to catch it and take the message off its claw.

“Check,” it says. Bond understands the Keeper just killed the bishop bait. It’s a good night to walk the roofs. Bond sends the answer on the back of a receipt he’s brought from Italy. It was a job he still doesn’t understand; what did the pizzas have to do with anything?

-

At home the phone rings and it’s Moneypenny on the line.

“James, dear,” she says without letting him talk, “the most fascinating thing is happening right now. Would you be so kind not to leave your flat tomorrow?”

“Because you’ll come to see me or am I grounded?”

Moneypenny laughs at him, “Because we have eyes on the eyes on you.”

“Sounds prudent.”

“I will not leave you alone, anyway.”

“I will not tire of waiting.”

Moneypenny hangs up without conceding and Bond is glad to be given orders sweetly by a woman. It’s clear Moneypenny won’t come, of course. Bond isn’t sure what he should wear.

-

Bond has a very good cup of coffee, eggs and bacon as breakfast. When he’s done eating he sits down on the settee, and before turning on the T.V. he contemplates reading one of those weapon catalogues he’s overdue with, maybe picking up a beer. And the doorbell rings.

He was waiting for it, turns the television on to watch the security camera, and not surprisingly there’s nobody there, so he goes to the door with his Beretta 418, that’s always home with him.

Q is sticking to the wall very deliberately and he looks into the vinocular of the door like he knows he’s being seen.

_ Ah _ , Bond opens the door. Q looks at him head to toe very fast, “Bond.”

“Q.”

Once inside Bond corners him against the first wall and Q smells like Calvin Klein and that awful Head & Shoulders with Old Spice. It’s perfect. Bond doesn’t let him unload any of the bags before kissing him. Q gets his tongue out and Bond grunts against him.

“More.”

Q kisses him more, slow, making no sound. Bond almost says he missed him, the week he wasn’t around. But Q presses him back and says, “We’ve got a lot to do, OO7.”

Bond says, “I hope so,” and Q does blush this time.

-

Q explains to him, between his three screens sitting on the settee in the living room; the absurd magnitude of the operational network Kohan and Jazmín managed to organize and maintain throughout the years. Q even explains to him by whom they were inspired and where their ideals came from.

“There’s missing people from the KGB mentioned in the files we’ve got. They have infiltrated many organizations, but a single hit wouldn’t devastate them. It’s likely we still have false leads.”

Bons stretches content under the occasional stare. Q can’t help but be distracted at times, gaze caught by his legs or his face. Bond listens to him talk and answers, playing the game for long minutes.

“So how do we end them?” Bond asks, imagining he’ll have to travel with Felix to many places to spend bullets.

Q smiles, “Remotely,” and finishes the long line of code he had been writing since he arrived.

Then he exhales and looks at Bond’s crotch with little subtlety, though colour gets to his face. Bond is glad to be in his undershorts.

“We’ll see if this works,” says Q, pointing at the general direction of the screens. “I have to go to the loo.”

He stands up and passes by Bond without touching him. Bond stays staring at the little curve of his arse, distracted enough to be slightly alarmed by the notifications on the computer.

In one of the screens a satellite image shows up. In another, a live transmission on Twitter, news in Danish, describes how a small pasta factory exploded moments ago. The local police received an anonymous tip fifteen minutes before and found assorted weapons destroyed. The Secret Service is on location.

Q comes back five minutes later, says, “It worked then,” and passes by Bond again to sit in the middle of his machines. “Of course in some places you’ll have to go and handle it manually.”

Bond laughs, thinks him dangerous and it scrambles his gut, makes him want to fuck. Q turns to look at him and smiles back, “We know where Kohan is.”

Two hours go by, Bond can tell by how high the sun is. Q still had information to relay, code to write. Bond inches closer, bit by bit, until there’s a moment where kissing Q’s neck isn’t abrupt, and Q lies back and allows it, but doesn’t stop typing.

Q looks at him. Bond kisses him again. The typing continues.

Q stops, pulls back a little, deletes two characters, writes like a desperate man.

“I’m done for now” he says, and then looking at Bond with flagrant intent, says, “Take off your pants.”

-

Q slides one hand down his chest, down, all the way. They kiss good and long and when Q is jerking him, Bond stretches to undress him.

“No,” says Q, “we don’t have time for all that.”

Bond gets a hand on his hair. “What do we have time for, then?”

Q gets up and, still touching him, arranges himself so he can get Bond’s cock in his mouth, and looks up, with Bond’s hand in his hair. 

Q has a pink face, what he does seems practiced. Bond feels himself throb in Q’s mouth and sighs, affected.

When he’s getting close Q stops, touches him with a hand, wetly, with the right pressure, and Bond curses. Q kisses him and slides his other hand, touches him everywhere, behind his cock, and the right stimulation makes Bond jump a bit, moan inside Q’s mouth.

“You know what you’re doing,” Bond concedes because he’s losing his mind, and Q smiles against his lips.

“You’re easy to please,” says Q and strokes him faster, holds him a little tighter and Bond moans with his eyes closed, very near.

“You can be so good,” says Q.

Bond makes a little sound and Q eats it from him. He mouths the line of Bond’s neck, licks his pulse point and keeps going to the scar on his shoulder, licks it slow and warm. Bond stretches surprised, over stimulated.

It’s almost too much. It makes him come.

“Q,” he says overwhelmed, and then Q stops, looks at him like he understands, and Bond with his head in the clouds, realizes that he’s starting to be fond of the brat.

-

Twenty minutes later, Moneypenny calls the house directly, tells him there’s a sniper half a block down the street from his flat, and that Q has a sniper of his own in one of the briefcases. Bond takes the order, sends his regards to M and stands up to get dressed. Q hasn’t stopped reading, very focused since the alert sounded a while ago.

While he gets some clean clothes the stupor from the orgasm drops and he feels mobile again, but also in pain, in places where he had never felt the pain of healing. Ten hours ago he stopped taking the medication, and oddly enough it makes him feel brand new. He surely thought there were no pains left to discover, nor life left to live.

But there is, so he sets out through the skylight to hunt. Q asks him if there’s any tea he can make.

Bond peeks back in to answer him. “Of course, above the stove”.

-

Next day his confinement is lifted and Bond gets out through the front door of his flat, observes the roof where he had to kill a man yesterday, and the weather of London wets his face because it can.

This time he chooses the tube route, walks to the station with an umbrella opened for the cameras more than anything, and takes one of the tunnels that throw him near the river house. There, beside the water, he sees himself reflected and wonders why he feels so strange. How and when did time change him?

Bond wanders around the neighborhood, ignored until he gets to the park. Today there are multicoloured decorations, dripping wet smears on the grass. The man by the taxis is under a black umbrella and when he sees Bond he gestures to the next car on the line.

Bond climbs in, says, “Welcome are the dead to the land of the non-existent.”

The driver answers him: “For all is known and there’s only secrets in the house of oblivion.”

-

The Record Keeper doesn’t have a beard today. His red hair is sticking up in all directions and the elegant armani coat he’s wearing is accented by a cheap satin tie and a shirt that could be a school boy’s. He seems to be reading with intense interest the text forged in metal on a machine gun.

“Jimmy, how good to see you,” he says without looking up, turns around and says, “Queen kills tower, by the way.”

Bond isn’t surprised at all, even though there’s two file boxes by the desk.

“Horse kills pawn,” says Bond, and the Keeper whispers, “Phenomenal,” and goes to the chessboard on the table, adjusts the corresponding plays.

“I thought you would not be indulgent with me, sir,” says Bond, sitting down and pulling the first box near, unsure if he’s going to read all of it.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jimmy boy, I’m only showing you what’s necessary” says he, almost tenderly, looking down at the pieces and not blinking, “The names of some things are more than just that. I’m sure you understand.”

Bond saves that up to feel uncertain some other time and opens the first file; ninety percent of it is redacted.

“This could be fun,” Bond says sincerely.

“Check,” says the Keeper, and Bond looks at the board briefly to confirm that Q was right.

“Bishop kills Queen,” says Bond, smiling slyly, and the Keeper opens his eyes but doesn’t look surprised. He lays down his king without looking at it.

“Brilliant James,” the Keeper says. He even comes close and smiles. “Mansfield did well with you.”

-

Forty minutes after Bond has finished the two boxes, and is in a stupor from drinking fifty year old whisky, leaning on the base of the machine gun.

“Q is dangerous,” he says very sure, like when he confirmed M had been a OO in the war, or when he saw Felix kill five men in ten seconds while unarmed.

The Keeper makes a vague sound, “Of course,”he says, “all Qs are dangerous. It’s necessary for the job. That kid is a good friend of mine.”

And Bond thinks it’s true, feeling the weight of the PPK that Q gave him, between his arm and his ribs.

So they are weapons, all of them.

“Just one more thing,” says Bond, and the Keeper looks amused.

The bills for the pizzas are on the table, Bond doesn’t have to ask, the Keepers signs a page, destroys another, has a tic tac.

“They have you blown, Jimmy, they know,” the Keeper says, hitting the piece of paper with his index finger. Bond feels something weird on his back, “Comfortably under surveillance. They’ve got you. What are you going to do, OO7?”

Bond opens his mouth to answer but the Keeper stops him. “This matter I understand, you know? But I’m away from it, boy, I’m not concerned, though I’m minimally interested, but Jimmy…

“Beware of where you lay your head. You have the heat between your eyebrows.”

Before leaving the Keeper makes him wait at the door. The cannon at six sounds. The Keeper comes out with a package in his hands.

“Colombian coffee is always better with  _ panela, _ ” he says, sounding like Bond’s M used to sound while telling him the unexpected.

-

Bond picks his umbrella up from where he left it on a clean roof two neighborhoods away. He walks down the street afterwards, like a regular person.

Bond has intelligence enough to be sure that today is one of the random days Q is on leave. Tanner mentioned it lightly, saying it was M who had him sent to sleep personally. Bond observes the window he climbed last time and notices it has a new camera in one corner.

He smiles. What’s life without a challenge?

-

Q comes out of his room with a Beretta 25 automatic skeleton grip. He observes his houseguest with red eyes. Bond, relaxed in the kitchen, takes a second bite of the omelets he’s making.

It’s an English formality, Bond would say, that Q says to him while still aiming at his face, “Morning.”

Bond greets back and immediately. “Such refined taste, Q,” sincerely, “if it was my choice I would never have left the Beretta.”

The gun looks tiny in his hands, no finger on the trigger. Q has recognized him but still aims.

“What is going on?” Q asks, “what time is it?”

Bond shakes relevance off with a hand gesture, “It’s nothing Q, I’m making breakfast.”

“It’s three in the afternoon,” says Q, finally putting the gun down, looking out the window.

Bond guesses he can know that kind of stuff too by just looking at the sky.

“And I think I just made the best coffee of my life,” says Bond very proudly.

Q looks at him doubtfully, the weapon on his fingers, he’s wearing a white t-shirt and his pants are cotton plaid, he looks soft and drawn-like against the door frame.

“Sure, coffee, whatever.”

-

To his credit Q raises his eyebrows appreciatively while drinking the coffee and then makes a satisfied ‘ _ hmm _ ’ while eating the omelet. They eat in the kitchen. Bond has a portion and a cup of coffee as well.

They talk about secret things, the successful mission of OO5 and the very pretty riffle they started using at Mossad last year.

Passive aggressively they argue for a moment, eating. Q stares at him over the edge of his mug with bright fully awake eyes, and Bond flirts unhurriedly.

“Is it not better at your age to heal those wounds at home?” Q asks him with vain condescendence, but also with curiosity, and Bond is warm all over just arguing, not odd.

“By experience I know there’s no better analgesic that coming hard,” says Bond, and  Q puts the mug down on the counter like it weighs. “But I can leave if you’re too young to handle that.”

Q huffs a little smile and he’s still smiling when Bond leans in to kiss him.

When they stop Q tells him, his eyes black and his voice a whisper, “You’re so cliché,” but it’s almost fond. Bond would like to answer him with something definitely protesting, but they kiss again.

They will make love on the kitchen counter. Bond thought about it since he arrived at the flat and washed the dishes.

Q has his legs open and Bond can see just about everything under his pants, so he pulls him forward and gets on his knees.

Bond does all the good he knows and Q makes sounds, like he can’t keep them in, with his hands holding the edge of the counter and his legs bent. Bond holds him behind the thighs, the arse, eats him out wantonly.

When they fuck Bond feels trapped between Q’s legs and his body, it’s good, makes them both moan. So Bond fucks him excellently, calculatedly, until Q can’t hold back his voice, until he forgets his reserve. Does it confidently, until Q quivers in his arms and his cock jumps, hard and pink on his abdomen.

Q touches under Bond’s navel, where the hair starts to grow, near his cock, and looking down says, “ _ Ah _ , so hot.”

Bond touches him and kisses him, makes him come holding him at the nape, licking his lips. Q’s eyes roll back behind his eyelids, the sound he makes is full of air, he smells fantastic, of sex and coffee, like Calvin Klein.

Watching him come Bond thinks Q won’t be inexperienced anymore, for anyone. And he gets too hard to hold on, so he pulls out, almost berating himself for his thoughts.

“James,” says Q, “don’t stop.”

Bond kisses him, and over his mouth Q tells him, “I want more, James.”

Once he’s inside again, Bond shivers.

Q looks well fucked, his eyes green, his body soft. Bond fucks him mercilessly, without mercy for himself.

“I want,” says Q, and Bond feels like he’s on the edge of a cliff.

“You’re having me.”

Q smiles all mischief. “But I want you more.”

Bond moans low and then without restrain fucks with no style and little class, no rhythm, about to come. And Q holds him tight behind his neck and says, “yes, like this, I want you like this.”

It makes him come so hard, madness, Bond feels it everywhere and Q is holding him between his legs, inside him. So good. Bond puts his head on Q’s shoulder, on his neck, and feels connected, tangled. Bond calls his name like the secrets it is, and wonders how he didn’t realize before that he was falling in love.

Q tenses like a bow, and without letting him go grunts, “How dare you?”

When Bond steals a kiss, he says all intellectually offended, “The worst part is that I told you how to win.”

It’s true. Bond bites his cheek gently, only feels a little jealous of the few ex lovers.

“I’m the best cliché of them all,” is what Bond says, “by the way.”

Q rolls his eyes, kisses him, doesn’t ask him to leave.

-

They are still in bed when M contacts them both with smart formality and tasks them the same thing - to get Bond on a plane to Brazil as soon as possible. Q makes the tickets happen before the call is over and Bond kisses him before leaving.

“See you,” he says, petting a cat goodbye. “I don’t think it’ll be long.”

Q looks at him with uncertainty. Bond wonders what Q fears from all there is to fear.


	6. The Fight

In the reception The Girl From Ipanema plays and the hotel is very expensive. Bond is pleased. When the room service arrives an elderly woman with short hair walks in; she knows Bond since before Vesper.

“Always in trouble, aren’t you?” she says.

“Svetlana,” answers Bond, happy to see her.

M used to say that there’s nothing as uncertain but as comforting as a Russian ally. Bond listens to what she has for him, gets the suits ready in the closet while she has a drink.

“I recommend the marijuana from the fat man on the corner, two blocks from here. For that rib pain, boy.”

Bond stays alone in his room, considering with whom he should sleep first in order to know what he needs to know.

-

Kohan is in town, though whom he’s meeting and where is unknown, but there’s a couple of contacts under surveillance: people who didn’t take a turn correctly and a camera got them, that uploaded the right story on Facebook. Bond feels tall above the roofs but he’s standing on the sidewalk in front of a bar. Q describes the subject to him.

Inside he meets Arturo Hipolito, a young man with short hair and tanned skin, who lays whisky down and speaks English with the foreigners. He’s exactly Kohan’s type, Bond thinks, identical to Jazmin in the fall of his eyes and the dimples on his cheeks.

Bond stays until the shift is over and then takes him to the other room he reserved, and there kisses him a few times and opens his trousers.

Arturo is very pleased to be in his arms there in the hallway of the room, looks at him with dopamine clouded eyes and Bond sees, not for the first time, the honest attraction from another man towards him. Bond isn’t thrilled. Arturo has a nice face and in general a good arse, but that’s how it is.

“The last time I saw Kohan I had no chance to say hello. I was told he’s in town,” says Bond without untangling himself, and this lad looks at him like he’s thinking something complex.

“You’ve talked to me about Kohan like four times today and it was me who once fucked him. Do you wanna fuck him too?”

Bond says, “I’d rather kill him, to be honest,” and he laughs off his own dark humor.

Arturo looks at him and laughs without opening his mouth. “So exaggerated.”

Once Bond knows about the other bar Kohan usually frequents (because apparently he fucks no man since he married) and about who’s in the city with him, he lets Arturo go, finally. He leaves without ceremony. Arturo doesn’t seem unsatisfied.

“Will you call?” Arturo asks when Bond is by the door.

Bond winks at him, smiles while he leaves.

Q clears his throat softly on the line and then tells him what to do.

-

The next night Bond goes to the bar and meets a woman named Tania. She’s got her hair braided and a ring on. They talk all night and Bond never leaves the gloom, watches everyone with attention to detail until he knows where everyone is at once, and also says the right things to her for them to go to bed.

It was a simple thing. She slept with a Danish guy a couple days ago and she described Kohan to Bond, telling him there’s all kinds of weird men but the worst of them are the ones that go to the whore house surrounded by other men, and buy for everyone, but they don’t eat ant women, sitting at the tables and looking at everything with disgust.

Bond makes love to her and gets all kinds of strange details, a theater play, a meeting, a Smith & Wesson, and a mention that they still mourn Andaur since they toasted to her name.

-

Felix has a car and sunglasses. He looks suave and well dressed beside the pretty Mustang that he got assigned a couple months ago. It fires rockets and makes him look important. Bond approaches him.

Q sent them both all the intel he could find last night, tying loose ends with Bond’s report and Langley’s.

“I have the blueprint of the theater where the meeting will be,” says Felix, smiling when he sees him.

Bond smiles back. “It’s always good to hear you give good news.”

“There’s a door with retina recognition,” says Félix.

Bond wrinkles his nose, “What’s important is that there’s a bar here.”

-

They plan something intricate that works for them both having in mind they don’t know all the accomplices.

Having pictures of many of them, they plan the disguises to use, the escape routes. Felix and Bond toast when they agree where to hide extra amunition for the shit storm on the way out, and then they ask for the fourth round.

“My ass has jet lag, brother, I haven’t slept in five days,” says Felix.

“And I have a craving for pizza.”

-

Bond can’t help but remember the man dressed in red that guides him to the house that doesn’t exist. While looking for a decent pizza shop he realizes that in town there’s a branch of the same restaurant the Keeper made him visit on his request.

It’s a good day to eat Neapolitan pizza in Rio de Janeiro.

-

Bond walks into the pizza shop talking with a pretty woman. She has been talking to him with heavily Portuguese accented Italian, inviting him to the pizza place a block away from the door. He’s amused. 

Without making any gesture, he’s surprised indeed to see two attendants to the meeting, ones he has never seen in person before, only on pixelated photos that Q sent him. 

The Keeper has his mysterious ways. Bond might send him a nice bottle of champagne for the intel. Even though ‘intel’ is a strong word for it, since the Keeper had him buy some pizza and then said nothing about it.

Bond is willing to bear with his Commanders, so he’s thankful, regardless.

He untangles himself from the pretty girl and asks for a beer with a personal pizza in the bar. He watches his targets eat and talk discreetly. Twenty minutes later he sees them stand up from among the small crowd in the restaurant, and leave out the main door.

-

Felix isn’t up yet when Bond comes back, but he rises when he hears Bond move the guns around, and he comes out in his pants.

“Don’t we still have an hour?”

“Change of plans, no need for the disguises.”

“Why?” asks Felix, alarmed.

“I have got their eyes on me.”

“Where?” asks Félix, taking a gun from the table and Bond, keeping the best neutral expression he’s got, pulls out the evidence envelope from his inside pocket.

The proof that Felix has been too many years in the field is that he has no major reaction. He even smiles a little, seeing the blue irises looking up at him from the bag.

“Elegant as always,” says Felix.

Bond laughs, proud of his pun. 

Spies aren’t gentle even if they are gentlemen, after all.

-

Felix dresses up with a good dinner jacket, white bespoke. Bond goes for dark blue. When he looks at himself in the mirror before leaving, it seems to him that his eyes stand out due to the cloth.

He feels heavy, sitting in the huge cocktail lounge that is, of course, a smoke screen for the real entry. Bond and Felix watched the whole theater play and are now drinking. The crowd needs some ten minutes more to leave the auditorium, and then it will be easier to sneak through unseen.

Felix says very clearly in his ear, “At the south exit there’s a Norwegian fuck I know,” and Bond turns to see Felix, twelve meters to his right, putting down the glass of wine like he was drinking. “I can’t believe it,” he whispers without voice, and Bond understands only because he’s watching him say it.

“I can take that one, see you inside.”

They meet again eighteen minutes later in front of the door equipped with retina recognition, Bond pulls the bag with the eyeballs from his pocket again, and Felix tells him flatly that nine years ago in Norway he was ordered to kill the first woman he ever fell in love with.

The door opens; there’s an elevator.

“A moment,” says Q in their ears once they are inside.

When the door closes Bond asks Felix what he did about her, and with a transcendent gesture of peace Felix answers, “I shot her twice in the chest.”

This isn’t a story for a time like this. Felix had never mentioned it.

“What does that have to do with this?” asks Bond, and Felix looks at the gun he has in his hands.

“That Norwegian you just killed was the one who gave me the gun to kill her. Years ago he worked for the Secret Service.”

“Six floors up agents,” says Q, and then, his voice not changing, “It was Epke Wavers, Norwegian Secret Service, presumed dead eight years and ten months ago in Oslo, killed by Margarita Hambuchen, Russian Intelligence.”

“Margarita?” asks Bond.

“Margarita,” Felix nods.

-

Virtue of Felix. He had been there and met Vesper, or Bond wouldn’t have told him about it, just as he hasn’t told anyone who didn’t know about it beforehand. He isn’t surprised to know about Margarita.

It’s a force over war: love. Bond always suspected Felix had lost it all, but since that’s rather common in his colleges, he kept his questions to himself. 

The elevator doors open.

Nobody sees them as they walk out. Felix is transmitting live from the glasses he’s wearing, and his face reveals for an instant what training was meant to conceal.

Bond doesn’t know what kind of face he’d make at seeing her alive, maybe the same. To Bond, Felix doesn’t deserve pain, even if he has earned it.

Q makes a short noise of surprise.

Margarita is talking amicably, wearing a silver dress and two scars on her chest. Bond had never seen her but Felix looks at her without blinking for eight seconds, and says her name again. She has Kohan beside her, is sitting between Jazmin and Muhammad, drinking wine among the diverse crowd.

Bond checks the perimeter, sees two exits and a bathroom. Fifteen tables, eight private booths, a big broad table in the back being put together. They’ve been seen but not recognized. Bond is wondering how is it that Muhammad is alive if it was Felix who killed him, wondering if maybe ‘dying’ is an initiation. 

Q tells him he’s getting insane data from the facial recognition software, and Trower cuts the transmission suddenly.

“There’s an explosive in the room, we are sending back up,” he barks over the earpiece. “And Leiter, your orders have not changed.”

Bond _ hates _ earpieces.

Q says, “Bond, get out of there,” and Bond turns to look at Margarita by instinct.

Margarita looks back, has a gun out and is already aiming.

War happens all at once, confusing and at top speed.

-

In the middle of cross fire and with no earpiece, Bond sees a man break through the shoot out running towards them, covered by a third. Just before Bond blows his head off, he recognizes the lad from months before, the undercover agent he shot to maintain cover, a boy from the CIA.

Felix almost smiles at him, but doesn’t say a word when Les says, “Leiter, we have help.”

Felix just stands up again and kills people with a neutral face that would scare anyone smart.

Bond doesn’t enjoy crowd deaths, this is the part of the job that he keeps in dreams and drinks to forget about. The good part of espionage is the seduction and data extraction, one or two untraceable deaths, but not this. There’s shooting until his ears ring, until he runs out the magazine.

People drop wounded so differently, and at the same time they all fall with the same dance of death.

Bond distinguishes the standard CIA gun in a group of obvious ex-marines behind a table, which is a relief. Les shows them the scar from the shot Bond gave him, and then tells him screaming how he was placed in recruitment two months ago. He hands over ammunition enough to kill them all, and that’s good because Bond had extra himself.

This is a won hand. Bond knows it before taking aim and scoring an undeniable shot in the head to Muhammad.

After a while the shooting dies and Bond understands, the ones left alive have the real battle to wage.

Jazmin yells from the north, “Since we all have practice dying, how is it going to be?”

One of the marines that Les brought shoots at the table she’s using as cover and Bond hears her burst into her hyena laughter.

That’s when the bomb goes off.

-

In the middle of bodies lying everywhere, Bond thinks with strange longing of his earpiece and Q’s voice.

Felix hasn’t made any noise since they met among the dust, he’s not wearing the glasses, and has a cut on his head that has dirt from the rubbish mixing with his blood.

Margarita has a broken arm and is unconscious. Felix is looking at the sky, over the roof that blew to pieces with the explosion. Les and the others are looking for survivors, and there’s screaming, but Bond is deafened since the shooting.

Felix pulls out the second gun he had against his chest and aims at the inert woman, and in the faint warm smoke of the disaster around them, Felix tells him a story with no voice but moving his lips.

About a winter, working a slow one in Oslo. When he met a brunette woman with the name of a cocktail, that took him by the hand through the snow and lit up the fireplace in the house, gave him kisses all morning, and planned with him how to break away for a couple years to the Ural mountains, until the Secret Services would forget about them.

He tells Bond he hadn’t formally resigned yet, the night before they were meant to leave, and he received a message from Langley at three in the morning with a file on an assassin sent to kill him. It turned out she had orders to leave him frozen on some mountain, for the animals to eat his eyes and the peasants to find him once the winter was over. 

It was an order to kill, that file, like many.

That same morning one by one his partners were dead, and Felix was in the right place to see her shoot the last one down, and to shoot her. He remained honorable, took the order, placed his country above himself. Felix isn’t moving his mouth any more, but James heard it all.

Margarita wakes up with the cannon against her forehead. They are behind a broken table, over the fifth or maybe the fourth floor. The explosion was well thought out, it was an emergency measure. It was lucky that the building held up or they would all be dead. The faint sound of sirens is to Bond like the first raindrops of a storm.

“How dare you?” asks Felix, with all his voice. Bond actually hears him like thunder over the loud ring of his ears.

“I didn’t want to kill you!” she says, “My treachery wasn’t to you; you should’ve followed me!”

“And take orders from Kohan?” asks Bond, unable to hold back.

She laughs, formal with her wrist broken and the heat of death tanning her skin, “Is that so bad? Even you could change your M.”

Bond doesn’t answer because he’s deeply bothered by a stranger saying that to him. Felix hesitates and Bond sees in the distance the first rescuers walking amidst the disaster.

“Your treason was to me, if you loved me so much. I should have known,” says Felix and loads the gun, with wet eyes.

“I’ve always had debts I could never repay, and I could die once if I needed to. You too. Everyone who’s good dies at least once,” Margarita says, pressing her head tighter to the cannon. 

Bond steps past, stops watching them.

They say a couple things more but Bond doesn’t see, hears only the screams and smells the blood. The paramedics are carrying the wounded on their stretchers. The shot vibrates the floor and Felix is beside him a blink later.

“I had already killed her. I already knew. This doesn’t change it,” Felix says, but cries anyway..

There’s a whole lot of dead people and nobody to judge. Bond hugs him.

-

Bond has bloodstains on his blue jacket but it’s not too noticeable. They are received at the hospital and Felix has his head stitched. When he’s out of the consultory he’s flirting with the nurse, and gives Bond a goodnight like someone leaving to get laid.

The night still has hours, and Bond is electrified, so after he’s given some pain killers and only old wounds are found, he sneaks out of the hospital and takes refuge in a casino until dawn.

He has four very good hands of poker, so he comes out of the casino with enough money to have breakfast at his fancy. Despite it, he goes to the hotel and eats there instead.

Felix is gone, but sent him a message an hour ago. 

“Cheers for better days, brother.”

-

Bond dials the number and gives the four codes in order, he’s about to give the fifth when Q interrupts the call..

“They aren’t done counting the dead,” says Q.

“Did I frighten you again, Q?”

Q makes an ambiguous, uncharacteristic sound. Bond will take it as an affirmative and keep it to himself.

“M is furious because neither Kohan nor Jazmin have shown up yet,” he says, “and I saw you walk into the casino six hours ago OO7, I even slept.”

Bond feels a lot like coming back home.

-

In the airport Bond looks for Tanner in the multitude, and before feeling out of place for doing it, sees him waiting in a coffee shop with two cups.

“Bond,” says Tanner when he sees him. “Welcome.”

In the car they talk about the weather and Tanner informs him with light happiness that it will snow in the next few days.

When they make it to MI6, Bond has half a report done between the easy talk with Tanner and his own need to decompress what happened with Felix, with whom he hasn’t spoken in three days. 

It doesn’t matter because Bond sometimes doesn’t talk to him for months, but it’s not everyday one has to see one’s first love die, again.

-

Moneypenny comes in as Bond is leaving M’s office. She has circles under her eyes and looks a little upset.

“Damage control,” she says in general, not saying hello, “Next time I’m going down with the PPK to Accounting. I’m brassed off with there not being enough money for the Aston Martins Q plans to modify. All that when I have half of Brazil on the phone.”

Bond smiles and feels warm to the bones at seeing her sit down, all brunette and displeased in her chair, like someone who has the world to put back in place.

“It is not fortuitous that Moneypenny starts with an M,” says Bond.

“Can you imagine if I got to be M?” says she, writing something on her computer. “I’d fire all the accountants,” and she laughs. “One day they’ll get my blood pressure up.”

Bond laughs, disguising the nostalgia at the reminiscence.

“You’d be a good M, Moneypenny,” says Bond honestly. “ I won’t be able to retire until I can leave it all safe in your hands, dear Eve.”

That makes her stop. She looks at him like she can see the future. “James,” she says, “it’s good that you’re back. I almost missed your flirting.”

Bond laughs a little.

“I speak only the truth,” he says. “I’m glad to be back.”

“You know it will snow?” she asks and her eyes shine.

Bond realises he loves her a lot, and that he has many reasons to buy champagne.

“Yes, we’ll have to toast,” they smile in complicity and then she points her finger at him and says with a face all businesses.

“I don’t know yet if you do have a life.” She is very serious suddenly. “But the truth is, Q took a two days leave.” She’s smiling and very much trying to read his face when she asks, “What do you say to that, dear James?” 

They wink at each other, Bond is about to laugh and maybe even tell her something, but M interrupts them. “Stop with the chattering you two!” he says. “The Brazilian ambassador is here, Moneypenny.”

-

It’s late and Bond goes to his own flat, sees the frames hanging where he installed them on the walls, finds the fridge almost bare and more drinks that he remembered having. He stretches in the hallway, comforted with the quiet of the night, and doesn’t feel like drinking or eating.

Puts the Beretta under the pillow, and lays down to sleep.

-

At seven in the morning he knocks at Q’s flat and feels vague tenderness when one of the cats mewls at his arrival. Bond brings everything to make breakfast and one baguette. He feels confident and excited.

Q opens the door with an expression that Bond didn’t expect, even though he’s allowed in.

“Good, you brought that coffee,” says Q, and leaves walking to the sofa.

Bond does bring the coffee in a bag, with everything else, and it is not visible, but Q is there in pajamas and can deduce that kind of thing with a look.

Bond watches him play Fallout 3 for half an hour while he cooks.

When they eat Q pauses the game and they both sit down to slice the eggs, drink coffee. They are done quickly and then Q stretches a little and from under a cushion he pulls out a cigarette pack.

They are not mint flavoured, nor a brand Bond usually prefers. The house doesn’t smell like smoke. Bond hadn’t seen ashes. He’s only a little weirded out.

But they smoke the cigarette in the living room, where they are sitting, beside the computers where Q is monitoring everything anyway, with the cats in front of them, Fallout paused. Bond suddenly doesn’t know how to ask, and he’s unsettled to feel inadequate, to doubt.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks, because Q has said three things since he arrived.

“I want to know why you keep coming back.”

Bond looks at his whole face and Q has the aura of those affiliated with death. He looks back without being intimidated, and doesn’t smile or look bothered. Bond leans back on the settee. The morning is quiet outside, the sun in the windows. 

Bond tells him he felt a lot like returning, maybe to never have left.

Q takes in every word like there’s math to be done, and incredulously tells him that Bond “wants many different things all the time,” and Bond feels like maybe he didn’t answer for real.

“I slept with other people in Brazil,” he says, and Q makes a gesture that cuts his impulse.

“I know Bond, I read the report.”

Bond simply can’t hold it. “And the whole file as well, I suppose.” 

Q looks at him like he’s been slapped.

His eyes are real green, almost gray with the light, his left eye has a yellow spot near the pupil.

“Know that I’ve read yours, all the OO’s, and all of the agent’s that I monitor.” He’s offended. Bond finds him so attractive. “It’s my job, but you already know that, or didn’t you read my whole file as well?”

Bond calls him by his name. Q’s barely taken aback, and Bond tells him that yes, that he read almost two boxes; and Q smiles looking down, and tells him that the file on Bond’s lovers alone is probably longer than that. Bond shrugs. The number stopped being exciting a long time ago.

“I am not to be trusted, that’s true,” says Bond, and feels oddly untrained, like when he was a boy, so he looks somewhere in the smoke of the dead cigarette. “But I think I’m falling in love.”

Bond turns around and the surprise changed Q expression, his eyebrows are up, he starts blushing. 

“I suppose it might be hard to believe,” says Bond. Q says nothing.

Q resumes the game. While the character walks in a desolate world Q speaks. 

“Hard to believe indeed.”

They remain silent for a moment, but Q is relaxed now, almost leaning on him. 

Bond surrounds him with an arm, and speaks into his hair, saying he had never been afraid for Felix, and that he doesn’t want to interrupt whatever he’s doing (because Bond never wanted to be interrupted) but he is sort of afraid right now.

Q huffs, like he understands everything, and of course he does. He tells Bond that Felix is alright, that he made it home yesterday, went to a Walmart. Q has struck out in Austin, and casually greeted the camera like a man who knows his way around.

And then Q says, “Time to put the radio on,” and in the game he does. I Don’t Want to Set The World On Fire by the Ink Spots plays.

Bond likes Fallout now.

When Q turns to look at him they are close. Bond feels pulled forward like a magnet. Q lets himself be kissed over the jazz, opens his mouth and tangles, easy, tasting like coffee and cigarettes. Bond feels liquid inside his mouth and groans a little. Nothing like a long awaited kiss.

They breathe over each other's face and Q says, “James, I couldn’t help them.”

Q tells him, close, right there, that in Rio two of the marines Bond saw died, and Q was monitoring them at the time.

Then Q pulls away, stretches and says, “It’s not the first time it’s happened.”

Bond knows that of course it isn’t, that he read Q had been in the business for years before being Q, monitoring agents on classified missions soon after his talent was recruited. Knows that Q and Moneypenny used to be a star field team, good old untraceable espionage with no shots fired, most of the time.

Q looks like all those who carry nightmares and memories, but he also looks at the screen and breathes easy and deep, and Bond finds him strong, reliable.

“It will surely happen again,” says Bond, because he has no pity for him, and Q looks back like he has had a revelation. “Do you still feel the cause makes sense?” asks Bond, not surprised to be curious.

Q doesn’t answer at once, but frowns, pauses the game when the song is over and says, “Yes, even if war never changes, this is my service.”

_ Good _ , thinks Bond,  _ good _ . Because the only time it was unbearable to work was when he thought all the death had no meaning, that no one could survive the war.

“Good,” says Bond, and closes in to kiss him, Q stops him.

“I would have told you that this could only happen once, but you never do as I tell you, anyway,” says Q.

“I have done what I had to,” Bond barks.

“And what is that?” Q asks.

“To come back here.”

Q looks at his eyes, his hands.

“Ah James,” says Q like he’s carrying a heavy burden, “I was waiting for you to come back, but I shouldn’t.”

Bond could fall in love with an Italian woman and leave, never come back, maybe. Win a hand of poker, get shot in the head, slip in the shower, take to bed for the last time someone who’s not him. Bond smiles at Q, all intentions.

“I’m happy,” Bond admits, and Q rolls his eyes.

But Q kisses him, stretches over him and Bond lets himself be sunk into the cushions, be kissed, and enjoys it. Bond grunts between Q’s lips and under his hands, feels him whole from chest to toes, feels Q’s cock hard against his hip. Q bites his mouth a little.

“Hm,” says Bond.

Q breaths against him, “Please.”

They stop kissing, Q gets up, pulls his trousers down enough and he’s not wearing any pants, when Bond is about to sit up Q makes him lay down again, says, “Please,” again, and then he is surrounding Bond’s chest with his legs, “let me.”

Q plants his hand on Bond's forehead, presses softly until the angle seems to satisfy him.

“Ah” he says, “I want it so bad.”

_ Me too _ , thinks Bond, and opens his mouth, Q dips in unhurriedly.

Bond grabs him by the hips and swallows, Q trembles, but holds on to the backplate of the sofa and fucks, with even rhythm. Bond takes it, and feels frenetic, but relaxes under Q’s weight; opens his trousers with one hand and touches himself while Q digs his fingers into his scalp. They fuck for a couple minutes and then Q moans, and laughs a bit.

“Stop,” he says, “stop it or I’ll come.”

Bond could come too, but he’s been avoiding touching himself that fast.

“What do you want?” asks Bond under him, and Q takes off his pajamas, puts himself all over his mouth, his cock and far down, his perineum, his arse.

They fuck after. Q rides him and asks him not to move. Bond does as told; stays still and takes it long and short, until focusing is hard. Q kisses him when Bond closes his eyes, and it’s too much, the heat of his mouth, of his body.

“Oh,  _ hm, _ ” Bond twists, Q fucks himself faster.

“Close?”

Bond moans, looks at him and Q is hard, touching himself, fucking with no reserve.

“You’re always so good at this, James,” says Q, leaning to kiss him again, and Bond shakes all over. “You don’t have to hold back.”

Bond barely moves, coming before Q is done talking. Q makes a sound, delicious inside his mouth, moving still. Bond feels exposed, because this thing of coming uncontrolled doesn’t stop, and Q laughs touching his belly, underneath the shirt he’s still half wearing, looking like he orchestrated mischief.

“It’s not bad to come first.”

Bond isn’t nervous, just a little bewildered. It’s like Q wants to peel his training away from him, and Bond can’t keep it together, really.

“I want to do it right.”

Q smiles at him, getting on top of his chest again.

“Oh James,” he says, touching his mouth with his cock. “You can no longer be bad at this.”

This time, Q does fuck him until he comes.

-

Bond mixes six measures of gin, two of vodka and one of lillet blanc over ice on the vase, then shakes it nicely. Double strains the drink over the two glasses, peals two stripes of lime. Reminds himself where he is, what time is it, what number he has, where he answers to; and then the drink is done. To make a Vesper is a whole act when one is James Bond.

He takes the two drinks from the kitchen to the sofa, where Q still plays. They kiss and toast.

“For the dead,” says Q lifting the glass. Bond couldn’t agree more.

They drink. The martini is a sacred cocktail connected to the void, beauty, death and love. It’s very cold and it’s still an hour to dinner. This is the perfect moment Bond has been awaiting for months, it cools and warms his chest at the same time.

Q completes a mission in the game and makes a little sound of celebration, takes a swig of martini.

Scowls very non gracefully, not elegant at all.

“ _ Blergh, _ ” says Q, sticking his tongue out, and holding the control on his hands again.

Bond drinks, thinking to himself that he believed more likely to die of old age, than to fall in love again.

-

For two days he’s tasked with paperwork, and M orders him to go train with the others until new developments happen, because the Brazil storm is ongoing. Q has made chaos reign in Sudafrica too, twice in half a day, and still there’s no proof Jazmin or Kohan are dead or alive, in Uruguay or Pakistan.

Bond goes out for a run where the recruits train, and fights in the gym with the new OO3, talks casually with Hawks while they lift weights, and even goes by medical to do some shoulder therapy, for variety..

At night he wears a gray suit and goes to the casino.

Sophia deals him eight blackjacks. He drinks two glasses of whisky at the roulette, gets bored among the common crowd of his favourite casino.

When he comes out Felix texts him.

“In Sussex tomorrow at 1500.”

-

He wakes up in Q’s bed, which doesn’t have the best mattress he’s ever slept on, but Bond rested so well he’s not even uncomfortable with the cat not letting him move his leg in peace.

“Morning,” says Bond, the day pale and gray.

Q is awake. Bond has felt him stretch and yawn, but Q gets further under the covers, cuddling.

“No” he says.

Q won’t fall asleep again, yet Bond embraces him, anyway.

-

In Crawley, Sussex, lives a divine redhead, an apparition of a woman, meter and ninety of grace, seventy kilos of virtue. Felix fell in love with her three years ago, Bond was with him when they met. 

Felix had a job going on back then, little undercover assignment, so he spoke with the neighborhood's accent like he’d lived in the corner his whole life.

Bond listens to him speak with his odd character on, again. It’s absurd, because his voice is higher and his way of moving is inoffensive like it never is, but Felix is not telling lies.

“I went to Brazil a couple of weeks ago, the weather was fine, I traveled with James for business.”

Bond isn’t surprised that Felix even tells Elizabeth about the mishap of meeting with an ex. 

Felix says, “It was like seeing a ghost,” and then he has a drink.

Elizabeth is a woman devoid of all military training. She’s beautiful and smart. Hopefully she’ll never know and she’ll live freely, because she laughs at that, ignorant of what it means. Felix said it comically, and it’s better like that. Bond could swear he sees him suffer for an instant, but it’s brief.

-

With Felix, they go to MI6 the next day. They meet up in Q’s branch with M, Tanner, and Moneypenny for two hours, to talk strategy. Q makes a methamphetamine laboratory blow up in Oklahoma while disassembling a computer. Sitting behind a desk in the back, listening to them speak, Bond watches him very discreetly.

At the end they have a decent plan, Bond will travel out in the field for three weeks. If everything goes alright he will be home indefinitely to set paperwork down, which is the slowest part of espionage and what he’s done the most.

He’s thinking about which brand of champagne to buy in Germany with all the good options he’ll have. When leaving he promises Moneypenny that if he finds Jazmin, he’ll buy a second bottle.


	7. The Victory

Bond has a flight at four twenty in the morning, so at ten and a half he walks into the casino, willing to beat Leiter at the poker table once again.

Sophia deals, everything appears to be in place for a good night. 

An elderly woman, who Bond has seen several times before, is sitting to the right of the dealer. She’s drinking champagne, smoking a cigarette, and has a comfortable structure of chips in front of her drink. Bond looks at her amused. 

Sophia doesn’t disappoint. Her nails are dark blue, her eyeliner makes her eyes sharper. An hour hasn’t gone by and Bond plays legitimate four of a kind, his pair of sevens for the pair of sevens from the house. Felix downs his whole drink and asks for another, angry at his loss. 

“Another good night, Mr. Bond,” says Sophia with her cat smile, counting the chips with one hand without looking, sliding them on the table. 

Sophia isn’t married. Her parents are from somewhere in Europe that was once part of the U.S.S.R. The night always goes well for her; she consistently wears a mischievous expression. Bond has seen her for months in the same casino and it’s only today that he feels he might take her to bed. 

Felix does the Q gesture in sign language, and Bond looks at his phone under the table. 

“Blown,” says the text. Felix has already stood up. 

When Bond stands and gathers up his chips, the elderly woman beside Sophia laughs deeply, counting all the chips Bond couldn’t take from her. 

“Always the same OO7, a beautiful woman in the casino, isn’t it?” says she. 

Bond watches the old woman a moment too long. From the corner of his eye he sees Sophia shoot at him with a 32., giving him the same pirate face as always. 

Felix kicks his chair from behind so it hits the back of Bond’s knees; he falls backwards and the bullet doesn’t touch him. Sophia is definitely speaking Ukrainian, and the elderly woman answers with the evident intonation of a boss. Bond remembers the old woman clearly, the time he saw her at the same table with Sophia, months ago, before he was kidnapped. 

He rolls on the floor, gets up fast, pulls out the PPK and without hesitation shoots directly at Sophia’s head fearlessly. She twists acrobatically which gives away a thousand things Bond never saw in her before: the strength of her arms, the swiftness of her legs, the army training evident in the way she takes cover and aims again. 

The Keeper told him he was in the spotlight, and it’s Q’s job to know those things as well. And Bond, Bond was waiting for it, has been expecting for weeks to see that comfortable environment disturbed, the moment the curtain falls, the stare of death. 

The shooting has scared the civilians away, but Felix shouts at him from the next room that they are surrounded. The old woman is behind Sophia, smoking a new cigarette. From the second floor that the stairs indicate, Kohan steps out with his crow-like walk, all long lines and dark skinned face. 

“I got divorced,” says Kohan, like they are old friends, walking down the stairs, lifting both hands with no gun in sight. “I’m not up to business any more.” 

He closes in with Bond’s aim on him like bullets can’t kill him, and Bond watches him sit in front of the poker table, Sophia’s seat. 

“It doesn’t matter what I do, really. There’s nothing after S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and I was dead hours ago. I just haven’t been told, but you will understand soon enough, OO7.” 

Kohan tells him, without pause, that years ago a man friend of another man, enemy of a common enemy, proposed a job to change the world and make sense of the war. For this Kohan would exchange his life and everything he knew, which is what is asked of any spy. Bond sets his phone to record inside his pocket. 

Kohan tells him how he was saved from death in Siberia, where half frozen and minus a meter of intestine thanks to Bond, he was welcomed into a huge organization with hands in every government, with faces in all agencies. He tells him how he was in charge of ‘creating’ the phantom organization Bond chased, and that executed certain hits. Mostly political ones, some jobs more dangerous than others, recruitments, all those things he directed from the shadows. 

Kohan implies there’s more than one organization like his, that in MI6 there’s someone who serves coffee and tea, but worked with him on a job in a clinic in the Alps. 

“Did you record what I said? S.P.E.C.T.R.E. will come apart in your hands Bond, that is a war you cannot win in one lifetime.” 

Kohan tells him he saw so much he lost all sense of disgust, that Margarita never returned his love, that Jazmin wishes him dead and now lives in the shadow of Blofeld, and that he decided to betray them long ago as well. 

“I tell you this so you can kill as many as you possible, because I wish them all suffering, and you two are the best assassins I know,” Kohan says at the end. Bond hasn’t asked a single question. 

Felix barks from the entrance of the room, “Why would we do as you ask, traitor?” 

Kohan says, “I spent years working undercover for Blofeld in Mossad, Leiter. I met Margarita before you and debts brought her to my side eventually. Today I die because she was killed, and we got caught. This is the game; the time I have is also payment I was owed.” 

Felix says nothing. Shooting erupts at the entrance and Kohan closes his eyes with a sweet expression. 

“Thank you for your promise, Nadia. And don’t get killed too soon, Sophia,” says Kohan. 

Sophia moves with no hesitation from her corner. Bond reacts, but the shot fires and Kohan falls dead, face down on the poker table, the four sevens under his forehead in a pool of blood and tissue. 

“You’ve been so lucky James, that I’m going to trust that I will not die over this,” says Sophia in a London accent Bond knows, and then she takes off running. 

Of course Bond goes after her.

-

Bond loses her at the Ukrainian Embassy door. He has to put the gun down and contact M, because the guards come out pointing at him in a wave. 

A car from the same Embassy takes him to MI6, and looking out the window he listens to the recording on his phone, listens to the whole event beginning to end six times before getting out of the car. 

He’s sure of several things: Sophia is Ukrainian Secret Service working undercover in S.P.E.C.T.R.E. for at least a year; the older woman Nadia owed a favor to Kohan, so gave herself up on purpose and was probably the one to get Sophia inside the organization; Kohan had a price on his head after a business deal went wrong due to Margarita’s death, and it was Jazmin who put that price there when she discovered the betrayal. 

At Headquarters, Q is with Félix. Q turns around when he sees Bond come in. 

“I must have looked like an idiot calling them Quantum all this time,” he says.

-

He does not miss his scheduled flight to Germany, with a clean suit and all the toys Q packed for him. 

Bond tightens his tie in the hotel, has a scotch with soda at the bar, comes out at six o’clock to the main street. He puts on the plastic suit with economy of movement at the river bank, and with the portatile oxygen inhaler on his mouth jumps into the water with the least dramatic gesture he can manage. The beams of the lamp posts reflect on the gentle flow and Bond swims under the cut of the water to the other side, climbs the wall, sticks to the shadows until he reaches the job’s destination. There he unloads the explosive without making any mistakes, connects the wire, sets the detonator, and follows the shadow back to the river. 

He’s in the bar again, dry with his suit clean, drinking another cocktail, when the explosion is heard, rumbling the ground. 

Bond saw none of them, but Q confirms the body count. 

That morning he woke up not making any noise and with his face set, but he was dreaming about the twelve dismembered bodies from the explosion. That’s life. Bond stretches in the bed, drinks half a glass of water, allows his mind to forget the dream, and sleeps calmly two hours more before going to the airport.

-

In Prague someone plays Bill Evans, Never Let Me Go when he walks into the bookstore. He’s not among the tumult of people watching the pianist live. Robins flutter in the trees around the place. Bond is by the books, which remain silently organized on their shelves. 

His contact shows up in the children’s literature section at the appointed time. They exchange identical envelopes and Bond stays until the piece is over, because the pianist is a virtuoso and he appreciates these things.

He takes a train and then a small plane, arrives at Gazt three hours before the assignment, so he goes to the hotel and eats a nice cut because he craved one. 

At six twenty a woman waits in the park, smoking a cigarette. When she sees him she stands up. On the bench she leaves the USB that Q has been waiting for. 

He asks for a drink before dinner and then goes to the airport again.

In Sofia, the contact from Ukraine appears in a crowded street and confirms to him that Sophia is undercover, still alive and in Uruguay. Besides that they give him a hard drive for the consideration of not killing her. Bond takes the intel and that afternoon goes for an hour and a half run, then meets Felix and they drive to Bucharest.

-

In the safe house Bond picks up the phone and gives two codes to the operator. Before giving the other three Q interrupts the call. 

“OO7, how is Romania today?”

“Cold, but we bought vodka. How are the cats?”

Q makes a disapproval noise, “They don’t miss you, but don’t be sad,” he says, “I’ve never seen my cats suffer over anything.” Q is drinking something and Bond makes wounded complaints weakly, taking off his tie with the phone on his ear. 

“Moneypenny knows Sophia, Bond,” says Q after a moment.

They exchange data with Felix in the living room, taking sips of vodka, listening to Q assemble something. There are meetings to attend, data to share with several agencies, faces to know first hand, and a of couple places to blow up. 

Bond only has one order to kill for the rest of the trip, and he’s still a week away from it, so he’s calm. When the chatter dies he speaks with Q about the radar he’s building, and about the eggs he ate in the morning, about the woman who played Bill Evans in Prague. 

When M has Q called and Bond hangs up, Felix is in the hallway of the house with the light behind him. He has a golden aura that makes him look taller. 

“Is this common?” he asks, and Bond realises he spent three quarters of an hour talking, mostly about trivialities. 

“Somehow,” Bond answers, because it’s odd.

Bond took off his earpiece the other day in Bulgaria and his ear hurt like it hadn’t since he was recruited. It had been years since he wore it for so long.

“How cheesy,” says Felix with his nose wrinkled, and Bond lets his mouth twist into a smile.

“I told him that I love him,” he says, and it doesn’t sound uncertain. 

Felix opens his eyes like he never does, and his face doesn’t make sense for a moment. Then he downs a vodka and breathes in, and becomes Felix again. Bond doesn’t even laugh because the matter is serious. 

“What did he say?” 

“About that? Nothing.” 

Felix laughs, pours him a drink and hands it over. If Bond were any other man he’d think Felix might judge him, but in the middle of it all, Felix and Bond are equals. 

“Surely Q doesn’t trust you, James, and that’s smart of him.” 

“And so it is,” says Bond.

They toast.

-

“I never thought this would happen, brother,” says Felix when they are saying goodbye the next day, after the job they had together is done. 

Bond adjusts his suit jacket a little, and turns to look at him from his car. 

“What?” 

“That you’d fall in love again.” 

“Ah” says Bond. _Me neither_ , thinks. 

They don’t speak at all about his honest gay awakening, which is good, since they’re not drunk anymore. And Bond would have to be a lot drunker than yesterday to explain it. But Felix looks him in the eye for a moment, with the same face Bond made when he promised to protect Elizabeth. His friend tells him that it makes him hopeful that there’s still feelings in old killing machines like them. 

“Don’t let it soften you,” says Felix at the end, like Bond said to him once as well. 

“On the contrary,” answers Bond. Felix smiles, sunglasses on, looking east. 

Bond knows that Q is strong, that he doesn’t fear death. That every night they spend together, Q is the one who eats and Bond is eaten. All he says is, “Let’s drink champagne in London in a week.”

-

On the job in Bibione he walks the _Viale Aurora_ , and waiting for his target he sees a jumper, dark red and grey, made of wool, that looks like something Q would leave over his bed, but it’s in a Missoni boutique. Bond checks the clock and buys the jumper, always aware of his nine o’clock, and excited, he sees his objective cross the street like they agreed. 

Sophia doesn’t have her hair up like in the casino, but it’s styled nicely, heavy waves falling over her shoulders. She’s wearing a pink lipstick that accents the curve of her lips and matches her dress. Bond approaches her very much in the open and she allows him to catch up. 

“To strive, to seek,” says she, leaving her native accent to be heard in her words. 

“To find and to never yield,” says Bond. 

They both turn on their respective earpieces in the corner with the blind spot. 

Sophia delivers two hard drives and a folder with photographs of his target. She tells him that Jazmin sent for her that very morning and congratulated her on getting into the Embassy. She also tells him she’s planning to die in four days' time because the heat is everywhere, and from upstairs she received orders to come home. 

“It’s a good thing. I was tired of dealing in that casino.” 

Bond asks her about their common friends, after listening to the story of how she made it as an undercover in S.P.E.C.T.R.E. (which is classified). And Sophia tells a love story about herself and Moneypenny six years ago in Barcelona, when they shared security work at an International Summit. Bond has great control of his face, so he is very formal and laughs in the right moments, but it strikes him like a slap in the face. 

It’s as clear as water, after they talk for twenty minutes, that Sophia is a lesbian, one hundred percent, confirmed. All her body language, her comments and the way her eyes roll remembering Moneypenny. That’s a memory Bond will never have, and an expression Bond will never cause her. And to think that he almost tried to get her into bed. 

He’s glad now that he didn’t. Sex is monotonous when it’s not done for enjoyment, when it’s only done for the job. 

Bond understands Sophia was always acting; he himself was part of her role. She was the beautiful woman with her eyes always on Bond, dealing him the winning hands at the casino. 

Just like that, with a voice almost different and staring at a woman waiting for the lights to change, Sophia explains to him the time and place where he must be for the extraction. They share a kiss on the cheek that isn’t fake, a hug, and she gives him a weird smile that looks honest. 

Sophia is a beautiful, smart, strong woman. Bond says goodbye in the blind spot in the convenient park and waits for all to go right, for Sophia to die on her mission so she’ll be free to go home again.

-

In Trieste he stays the night in a very fine hotel where the waves can be heard, and the yellow legged gulls can be seen flying about. The room service is what it should be. Bond eats well when the afternoon falls. He walks the balcony checking exits points, and helplessly, is ever on the alert. 

The phone rings and Bond is laying on the bed in the right way to pick it up, barely moving, eyes still on the photos he’s been studying, says, “How is it going,” a pause, “Qtie.” 

Bond hears a sound that is definitely Q sighing in suffering. 

“Please don’t,007,” M says. 

The laughter in the background is most definitely Tanner.

-

At ten in the morning of the marked day, Bond is on a boat in the channel of the city’s center, wearing a navy cap, looking casually at the buildings, admiring the quiet beauty of all the things that make him think of Vesper, Italy, the cities at water level, and death. 

His man shows up in a window and Bond sees him from the corner of his eye. He’s in a different position than he anticipated, but at his twelve o’clock nevertheless. Sophia just has to arrive. 

When they do the dance, the people on the boats and in nearby houses yell with the out of tune sound of stolen privilege. Bond breathes the clear air that comes with the sea, and even though the boat is rocking he has an ideal shot; all the ambient sound helps him focus. 

_Bang!_ He feels it in the palm of his hand and sees it when his target collapses in the window. Bond can see him fall down the stairs. Sophia shoots a whole magazine. It’s just then that Bond sees Jazmin, with a bullet wound to her shoulder but still shooting. It rains fire, and with Sophia he jumps into the water. 

The police arrive, the news helicopter shows up above the city, and Bond gets Sophia out of the water, putting her on the boat. She’s white and cold, immobile. She’s wearing a very nice blue dress that doesn’t seem ruined by the water. 

Bond breathes over her mouth, but Sophia doesn’t move, stays still. The sound of the helicopter is deafening. Bond starts to feel pain in his shoulder first of all. Then he feels short of breath. The paramedics show up with their luminous jog, wearing reflective jackets. 

They check her quickly, try CPR maneuvers on her for long minutes, and then give up.

One of them walks away and pukes near the water, and Bond stares, shocked. They cover Sophia with a sheet and place her on a stretcher like she’s dead weight. Jogging they take her to an ambulance. Bond jogs behin them, blinded, away from his body, with no memories, like he’s badly drunk. 

When they close the door a nurse pulls out an syringe, and Bond feels nauseous, looking at the sheet over Sophia’s legs. The nurse turns to him, with the girl laying on the stretcher not breathing, doing nothing about it.

“Did you hit your head?”

Bond is about to yell something very offensive, it’s on the tip of his tongue. But Sophia takes a breath right then, suddenly. The nurse is still looking at Bond with concern. 

Bond comes out of his state of panic suddenly, like he’s finally out of the water. He registers Sophia breathing and gaining colour back quickly. The nurse actually put a bandaid on her arm after the shot. And everything is alright, because Sophia was under the effect of a drug she self administrated. He knew about the whole plan, all of this was an extraction job. 

Vesper died years ago.

“I’m fine” says Bond, and looks at the nurse with his best face, because he can move his face now. 

Sophia laughs softly when they arrive at the hospital; the siren is so loud that her voice is lost.

“Thank you for sharing your luck with me,” Sophia tells him, and gives him another crooked smile. 

Bond feels relieved they both came out of the water alive.

-

In one of the hard drives Q finds pictures of _Blofeld_ , the man Kohan talked about before dying. These photos match on facial recognition with a man named Helel Lynn, who died in a military exercise almost thirty years ago. 

Q says, “Vesper’s interrogation is here as well,” and Bond is almost surprised his first reaction isn’t to want to see it. 

“They were siblings,” says Bond, having an enlightened moment, seeing the picture Q just sent him. He feels he understands the end of a book without finishing it. 

“Vesper from Hesperus and Helel from Phosphorus, greek mythology,” says Q, reading what must be an analysis on some screen, then he says, “White!” like that means something very important, and hangs up the phone call. 

Vesper was like the afternoon light, indeed. Now, for her to have a brother called ‘Satan’ in Hebrew (morning light, whatever), who is the mastermind of a terrorist super organization is so cliché it’s unexpected. Bond knew about Helel, read about him while investigating her, thought it was a terrible name. 

Also, it’s modus operandi, that the leader is someone believed dead decades ago. 

Bond has been in his sights for years, since Vesper and Mister White. It makes sense that even his casino was infiltrated.

Bond anticipates Q’s call, answers. 

Q says, “Vesper and Helel were siblings.” 

Bond says nothing. 

“And White did military service during the same period in which Helel died. They were together in the same regiment. Vesper was a child back then.”

Q uses all they’ve deduced to decrypt the rest of the hard drives. The name of the place where Helel ‘died’ is the key to a software in development that can track and detonate nuclear warheads. White and Blofeld’s regiment number, plus White’s mother’s last name, unlocks a list of undercover agents in intelligence agencies. 

Bond goes to the airport with his earpiece on, listening to Q type and type, until he passes immigration and starts to hear the next shift of employees from the labs arrive at work and say hello to Q. 

Before taking the flight, Bond hangs up and calls Moneypenny.

-

When Bond arrives in London, Q is still asleep since he’s not answering texts. Tanner sends a car to the airport for him, and Bond talks all the way to MI6 with one of M’s drivers. Small talk, about how pretty the city looks covered in white, draped by an immovable mantle that they barely disturb. 

The sun has not risen when Bond comes out of the car and hears the void of the snowfall. The cold begins to give him goosebumps under the overcoat he’s wearing. 

Moneypenny is sitting at her desk drinking tea; it looks like she just arrived as well. 

“Oh James, you’re back already,” she says with a smile, “to get Q sent home to sleep I had to conspire with his employees.” 

They talk briefly about drinking champagne tonight since it's Friday, since it’s snowing. Before agreeing on where, M interrupts them, speaking on the open line he has with Moneypenny. 

“OO7, I don’t have all day.” 

Bond comments that the day hasn’t started yet, but walks into the office anyway to make his report.

-

At seven a.m. the cars and the city in general have ruined the snow and it looks opaque over the sidewalks, brown and slippery. Bond comes out for a cab and when the driver takes the first corner Bond realises he didn’t give the address for his flat, but doesn’t correct himself. 

Bond knocks on the door like a regular person. Q opens it and the two cats come out to rub against his legs. 

“I’m back,” says Bond with relief, and then he feels tired, bruised inside. 

Q looks asleep still, even though he’s wearing his glasses. His hair looks a little longer, his t-shirt has a couple of holes from the washing machine and the years. Bond comes closer and Q opens his arms a little. 

Before Bond reaches him, Q says, “Welcome.” 

They sleep together until noon and when Q awakes he says, very unperturbed, that he really feels like fucking, so they kiss under the blankets until Bond is coming out of his clothes. 

Q peels off his pants, and he’s all covered by the duvet so Bond doesn’t see it when Q pulls him into his mouth, touches him with one hand. Bond feels good, stretches and relaxes his legs. And Q does everything, with his tongue. Even gets fingers in Bond’s arse, and Bond makes a sound. All together it works. 

When Q pulls his fingers out he looks for a condom and puts it on himself. Bond can’t help but get a little tense. It’s not like he’s never done something like this, maybe not with a man, but Bond’s met dominant women, and about sex he’s not shy. Nevertheless, it is unusual. 

Q situates himself between Bond’s thighs, and he pushes in like he understands the angle. Bond can’t breathe, it’s almost unbearable for a moment, then Q kisses him, moans into his mouth. Not bad, they kiss more and Q jerks him when he starts to thrust. 

“ _Ah,_ ” Bond was about to say something, but he loses focus, feels himself getting hard again in Q’s hands. 

Q smiles close to his face. He looks confident, it’s revealing to Bond that Q does have experience doing this. And he does it well, even does it hard, holding one of Bond’s legs to his chest, pushing all in. 

Bond shakes and closes his eyes again, between Q’s hand and the rhythm he feels close, like on the edge of a cliff, and then he’s coming, helplessly. Q licks his neck, his shoulder, his scars, while Bond rolls his hips. And Q doesn’t stop jerking him, though he does it softer with his hand wet, still fucking him. 

“Hah,” Q smiles. “You liked that,” he says, pridefully. 

Bond pulls him by the neck and in the middle of a kiss bites him, almost cruelly. 

Q moans on top of him and strokes him faster, they gasp over the other. Q fucks him urgently, desperately, longer than Bond anticipated, and then Q bites him too and comes, quivering and sweating, buried inside. 

Bond’s cock is sensitive, and Q pulling out is kind of disturbing, but he feels light and well fucked. 

He calls Q by his name when they are under the blankets again. 

“I love you,” says Bond, cuddling him. He’s pretty sure he can fall asleep again and not dream of Venice. 

Q turns around in his arms, his breathing changes a little and his pupils are like a cat’s. His heartbeat quickens and Bond can feel it under the palm of his hand because he’s holding Q by the neck. 

“And I don’t even know if I like you, James,” says Q, but his eyes are smiling, and his checks are pink. 

They kiss in a slow tangle of sweat and Q pulls away to tell him that contrary to his nature, today he would really fancy a cup of coffee.

-

When night falls Bond opens the door to his house and Q comes jogging in, away from the cold. Ten minutes later Moneypenny and Tanner arrive. Felix knocks on the roof entrance just before nine. 

They open a bottle of champagne. Felix brought good caviar, so they get drunk talking about S.P.E.C.T.R.E., about the ones who died and the fresh blood, about M, Trower and the Kremlin. Well into the third bottle Moneypenny toasts Sophia. 

“If she hadn’t been such a spy I would’ve married her” says Moneypenny. 

Felix nods, says: “One should never marry a spy, it’s just bad luck.”

All of them agree bitterly, but drink to that. Q looks at Bond over his drink, smiling, and winks.

Then they talk about Elizabeth and her new car, and about Nile (because Mr. Moneypenny has a name) and his press officer promotion. Tanner tells them he’s been dating, but says no more, drinks twice. 

Q toasts all his dead agents with a calm expression. And toasts again because OO1 used a prototype in the field he more or less based on a _Bioshock_ gun, and it was a success. Felix is the only one who’s played the game so he drinks twice, then he proposes a toast to Margarita, and they accept. 

Bond has many reasons to laugh and keep drinking, to lay back on the settee with Q under his arm, content. War is outside the door of his home tonight. 

Knowingly that nobody present has parents alive, Bond tells them all very sincerely (and drunkenly) that he’s thankful to them for coming to his home in December, to be family, and they toast for that as well. 

Q looks at him with big green eyes, and Bond gives him a little kiss.

Felix and Moneypenny barely react, but Tanner sputters. Bond turns to look at him and Tanner only says, “There’s no more champagne on the table,” smiling. 

Bond gets up thinking of that fifth bottle, very nicely drunk and well treated by the music that’s playing. 

He pulls the champagne out of the fridge and Q is in the kitchen, looking at him with the darkness of the hall at his back. Bond uncorks the bottle and after the pop, Q speaks. 

“James,” he says, walking until they’re close. 

James calls him by his name, takes a glass from the counter, pours a drink. 

Q grabs his neck, kisses him close to his mouth, maybe he failed, he laughs a little, “James,” he says again. 

James kisses him on the lips, licks him. 

“I love you too,” Q says. 

James laughs relieved. He thought he knew, but there’s nothing like hearing it. They kiss again, slowly.

“Cheers to that.”

-

Next morning Bond writes the report that must be filed, as well as what he discovered with Q. It takes him forty minutes, and then he stretches out on the settee to smoke a cigarette, drink an earl gray and, finally, read one of his outdated gun catalogues. 

There’s a Norinco NDM 86 on the page of the most expensive rifles, and Bond looks at it longingly, thinking of that pretty wood inlay it has on the stock. Fantasizes, examining the details in the photos, about firing it and feeling the recoil. 

Q is sitting in a chair, with two computers; Bond’s as well as his T.V., still decrypting files from the hard drives. He’s been in a trance-like state for the last two hours, has not looked at his cold tea since Bond put it beside him, furiously writing something unending. 

“Q,” says Bond. 

No answer. 

“Look at this pretty gun, Q.” 

Q laughs still typing. 

“What makes you think that I will get you a gun because you think it –oh!” Bond throws the catalogue over a keyboard and Q observes the page for a moment, finally ceasing to type. 

“ _Oh_ , OO7,” he says reverently, “such a fine taste.” Bond laughs. Q says, “I’ve always dreamed of hand making the wooden stock piece for a Norinco.” 

Q raises the catalogue seriously, looks at it fondly. “I won’t be happy if you expect me to make one of these for you to leave in a river in Indonesia.” 

Bond stands up to offer him a couple smokes and to promise with his best seduction face that he’d sooner come back naked than without that rifle.

“C’mon Q, give me motivation to work.” 

Tanner shows up on the television screen. He’s at home judging from the background, and his eyes are a little beyond sobriety, “I have a good feeling Q. I already read everything you sent and I don’t know where to send Bond first.” 

Perhaps Blofeld also has loved ones, because when Christmas falls, M calls to tell him he won’t travel until after New Year, and surely not to find Blofeld. 

The war will continue. After so many years, Bond isn’t in a hurry.

-

When he wakes up on the first of January, Q is laying in bed wearing the shirt from the previous day. They both stink of alcohol because they went to drink at Moneypenny’s for New Years. 

Without trouble he gets up from bed and feels pain only in the places where it’s now chronic. Today is a good day on the joints and the temperature is nice for winter. While walking towards the kitchen to put on the kettle, he’s surprised at how content he is in general, like he had forgotten how it felt. 

Bond allows himself to smile like an idiot, watching the cats sleep on the settee, waiting for the whistle of the red pot, deciding how to make the eggs today.

-

He makes love to Q at one o’clock on the ninth day of the year, in the hallway of the flat, with his head in the clouds and turned on like a mad man. Q holds onto his arms and digs his nails while mewling all the best sounds, coming apart frayed and trembling. 

Then he finishes packing his bags, puts the gun in the suitcase under the dress shirts, and climbs out of the skylight heading towards the airport because duty calls to him on the other side of the world. 

In Canada, Felix is waiting for him, reading the paper and talking on the phone with Elizabeth. His fake accent sounds authentic under the charm of love. Bond doesn’t interrupt and picks up the newspaper to confirm the information. 

Good assignment this time. He might finish it in the first casino he finds if his eye is sharp enough. This is one of those jobs his M trained him to do on automatic. He feels almost relieved because he expects not to kill anybody. 

A green eyed brunette walks by the coffee shop where they are sitting. Felix and Bond turn to look at the same time, appreciatively. That woman can lift at least 80 kilos, and can run 20 kilometers without losing composure. 

“A couple drinks at the casino tonight?” 

Felix smiles, tells him that he’s got twenty minutes to pick up something outside Toronto, and that depending on how much explosives there are in the box he’ll confirm if they can meet before or after 10. 

Bond shakes his hand firmly, wishes him good fortune.

-

A few blocks down he has Q in his ear, and he asks, “In which downtown casino are there usually more Chinese after eleven p.m.?”

Q says, “At the Aladdin.” 

Bond fixes his suit waiting for the light to change and says, “The Royal, then.” That’s the second largest. Bond once bet everything on red at a table there, and not only did he win, he hit a jackpot. 

Q barks a question but puts him on hold, surely to deduce it himself. And as expected, a minute and a half later he’s on the line again and says, “Of course, that Chinese family only bets with bonuses, the big cash isn’t there.” 

Bond agrees with him, walking into the casino, wishing for the man in the picture to be sitting at a machine, like a criminal that Bond understands. So hopefully he will be free to take a tour of the other casinos, and if that’s not the case, then the target is with some expensive company lady, and that’s a story that might take him until dawn to unravel. 

After he’s checked in and Q starts using some kind of welding, Bond sees, in the back row of the horse race machines, his target. He’s gained some seven kilos and has a slight tremor in one arm. 

It’s not unusual for a man to break when they are weakened. Bond almost went mad when he thought his body had forgotten how to shoot. 

“For the perfect rifle we talked about, I bet the number 17 horse to win,” says Bond, totally sure, looking at the machine’s statistics. 

And so it happens. Q rumbles that he didn’t accept the bet, but acknowledges Bond to be ‘sharp for a blunt instrument’ and promises to consider it if he has the time. 

Bond uses the grace that comment causes him to start a conversation he has to have right here, with his target.

-

With twelve million in a fine brown leather suitcase, and with a tentative location for Blofeld next month, Bond goes through the casino thinking seriously about where to bet all of it on an uneven number, because that’s how the night smells. Then Felix shows up behind the coin machines, sitting in front of the blackjack table with a business face. 

“Five kilos?” asks Bond, making a broad assumption.

Felix smiles like a wildcat. “Seven.” 

Moneypenny chooses that moment to actually send him a picture of Q wearing his new Armani jumper. Bond toasts with Félix and downs a drink making no comment, very pleased. 

He decides this is the right moment to trust it all to twenty one, puts the suitcase on the blackjack table cautiously, and forty seconds later security jogs down the stairs at the back. 

The dealer finishes counting the bet and deals him fourteen, Bond taps the table and the seven comes out like it was summoned. 

Q has already called the police and it’s likely some spy will come by. Bond wins the hand and the dealer doesn’t have enough chips to pay him. A man with a shotgun runs towards him, Felix stands up like a bodyguard and Bond sees a blond woman with honey eyes, wearing a revealing green slip dress, sitting at the roulette table losing. 

She’s so beautiful, her wedding ring silver on her slender hand. Bond pretends to not understand the mess that starts. 

“Q,” he says to the air, looking at the diameter of her chest, “103 centimeters.” There's a camera in front of them that’s convenient for the joke.

Q grunts unamused. “The worst, OO7,” he says, and then after a moment, when Bond’s being pulled aside, “I’d say 104, because of her posture.” Bond smiles. 

The police walk in with a bang that Bond was anticipating; the blond woman is taken aback though. Felix has abandoned his persuasion attempt and is finishing his whisky. 

Today’s job is done. Bond smiles again when the Secret Service recognises him, and in his mind he calculates the few hours left before he can go back home.

THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.  
> [This is Q's jumper](https://www.jamesbondlifestyle.com/product/missoni-striped-sweater#:~:text=Q%20\(Ben%20Whishaw\)%20wears%20a,is%20currently%20hard%20to%20find.)  
> [UP2L8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UP2L8/pseuds/UP2L8) best beta.  
> Cheers.


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